The Stool Project
by HardHatShetland
Summary: Not all Pokémon are trained to battle fairly. Many of them are trained to kill discreetly. They are Pokémon Killers, vicious assassins in every sense. But one of them wants to put a life of neverending violence behind him. After being contacted by a shadowy corporate executive, he is forced to kill one last time just to make it all stop. (Contains uncensored profanity & mild gore)
1. Parasite

**_AN: Now, before I start this story, i'd like to establish a few things. This takes place in a 're-imagining' of the Pokemon universe, in which the PokeNation, as I refer to it, co-exists with the world as we know it, so don't be surprised if I take a few liberties in places. For the record, the canon of the games applies, with some exceptions, but this story takes place 13 years after the events of Pokemon X & Y (originally Black & White 2, but then X & Y was announced, so yes). Most non-canon events the characters refer to took place during those 13 years; either that, or before Red & Blue. With that said, let the story commence._**

* * *

_**Parasite**_

* * *

Oran berries. A staple of the Pokémon diet, and quite possibly the only food in existence that is naturally tasty and healthy at the same time; but of course, the tasty part only applies to some species, it seems. Sadly, humans are not among them, hence their reliance on fattening artificial food to keep their taste buds satisfied.

I suppose I should count myself lucky. Being a Breloom, I had a rather sensitive taste for fruit, vegetables and, oddly enough, tree sap, with the natural downside being that meat was even more tasteless than tofu; not that it mattered, since I can't really get any nutrition from meat. Meat… meat… reminds me of that one murderer who got rid of the corpse by feeding it to-

"Mister, why have you stopped picking?"

"…What? Oh… sorry, Shrun… I just… never mind."

"Never mind what?"

"…Do you not… understand the concept of 'never mind'? It means I don't want to talk about it anymore, okay?"

"Okay, okay…"

Damnit, I did it again. Every single day, I saw something, and somehow, horrible thoughts of death and killing flooded into my mind from the purest and safest of places. And the Shroomish knew. They, bless their souls, didn't know what it was that troubled me, but they knew something was up. They'd question it, and I, in my panic, would tell them to stay quiet about it and make myself look like a tyrant in the process. If I had children, I'd be a very, very bad father.

I suppose I ought to explain where I was. I was in the south side of the White Forest in the Unova region. Well, it was officially the Unova State, but everyone called it the Unova region for some reason. The White Forest… well, officially, the White Forest National Park… was… well, ideal is the best way to describe it. It was full of trees of all kinds, most notably a strange species of tree which were all giant and looked like those twisted marshmallow sticks with balls of leaves stuck on top. You don't see that anywhere else in the country or, hell, anywhere else in the world. Not even Australia. There were bushes around every corner, full of all manner of multicoloured berries which seemingly grew back days after they were picked. Useful for one like me, who was acting as the supposed leader of a group of Shroomish who found themselves practically stranded here; see, we Shroomish and Breloom are not nearly as well-distributed around the country as Kantonian and Johtonian Pokémon such as Oddish and Mareep, so we were, as native Hoennese, surrounded in the forest all sides by these fellows and the local Unovan Pokémon, for the most part. I could handle this just fine, given my… past experiences, but most Shroomish aren't like that. They need to stick together, or they get anxious and paranoid.

Anyways, there I was, picking the Oran berries under the shade of a particularly wide tree that was almost like an awning in practice, shielded from the rays of sun beaming down into the forest. Under the urging of the oldest Shroomish, who I called 'Shrom', I was also to look for some Watmel, Liechi, Rabuta and Ganlon berries for his special 'cocktail'. Shrom was determined to establish some kind of Pokémon cuisine, as opposed to a Pokémon survival ration like it is now, and has been for the past thousand years or so. He started speaking to Morsh, the only so-called shiny in the group.

"You know what I'd really like to see?"

"What?"

"A Niniku berry."

"What the crap is a Niniku berry? Are you sure you didn't just make that up?"

"Well, I don't know if they actually exist, I just heard about them… I heard that they look kinda like a human heart, except blue-and-cream and a bit squashed."

"Ew."

"I don't care if it's of 'ew' quality, if I find one, it's sure to make a delicacy."

"That's exactly what you said about the Haban, the Colbur and the Babiri berries. What happened with those? You tasted those and the next thing I know there's rainbow-coloured puke all over the leaf pile."

"Yeah, we all make mistakes sometimes. And for your information, it wasn't rainbow-coloured, it was blue and pink!"

"Seriously? You actually remember what colour it was? Who does tha- oh never mind. Hey Heavy, you see any others gathering?"

Most of the Shroomish called me 'Heavy' because that's basically what I was in their group; I was the Heavy, the Enforcer, the Defender. Not that the group ever really needed my power since there wasn't really any threats in the White Forest. There was the occasional hungry Nidoran who'd try nibbling on them, and on one occasion there was a Machop who picked up Morsh, Shrun and Ursh and started juggling them, which I had to stop. But those little incidents were far and few between. I imagine this was why they had very little respect for me… well, except Shrun. I never had any opportunity to demonstrate my usefulness, considering how, sadly, lethal combat was probably the only thing I was any good at. I was only leader of the group on paper, being the only Breloom, but because of the respect issue, I held little to no power in it; Shrom was the _de facto_ leader, being the oldest of them and having lived in White Forest all his life. I was always tempted to just tell them what I used to do, just to make them respect me more… I imagine if Shrom had heard what I did, he'd crap himself. But of course that's the problem; I had to keep it under wraps because if I didn't then they might fear me, which is what happened the last time I told someone.

Anyway, whenever one of the Shroomish said if I see any others gathering, that was my cue to look around to see if there were was any other Pokémon picking berries. Shrom was quite insistent on taking as many berries as possible so he could fulfil his culinary desires… which, apparently, were more important than the hunger of the hundreds of other Pokémon in White Forest. As per my instructions, I inspected the surroundings for other Pokémon and, at first sight at least, there was none. I thought 'that's very good, no more complaining from Shrom then.' But then I took another look. Specifically, I looked at the cluster of trees opposite the one we were standing in. I could've sworn I saw something moving around there, even if it was just a patter of microscopic proportion, like some kind of germ on a leaf. It didn't seem particularly threatening at all, but if there's one thing I could say I've always said (even though I've never really said it out loud), it is 'there's no such thing as being too cautious'.

"…Heavy? Is there someone waiting to snatch all Shrom's precious berries or what?"

"…Something's not right here…"

"Eh? But I don't-"

"Wait here, I'm gonna take a look."

"But there's clearly nothing there-"

"Yes there is."

"*sigh* If you say so, Mr. McCarthy."

Oh yes, I forgot to mention… Morsh had a thing for political humour. Quite impressive for a Pokémon, I think.

I slowly made my way out from under the tree's canopy, exposing myself to the beams of sunlight. The sunlight was of an intensity that would distract people without focus, but my focus was too great for that. I crossed the sunlit passage like a river, or an alleyway, making my way underneath the cluster of trees on the other side, where I was under the cover of shade once again. I only had a few nanoseconds to survey my immediate surroundings before a sudden rustling noise practically forced me to slide behind the nearest tree. I moved away from the small spots of light coming down into the darkness and took a quick look around the right side of the tree. I squinted in advance to inspect any faint lines and images in the shadows… as I expected, I saw such a faint outline. It resembled a rather short human, wearing a rounded helmet with a blade on top of it. Its body was somewhat egg-shaped, and its two arms had no hands, just more blades. It was, without a doubt, a Pawniard.

Clearly, something was wrong here. Pawniard and their masters, Bisharp, are extremely isolationist creatures and are rare anywhere outside of the forests surrounding the Challenger's Cave, let alone in such a peaceful, uneventful place such as White Forest. And this one was by itself, from the looks of things… that wasn't right at all. Wherever there's one Pawniard, there's bound to be a small army of them lurking around the corner, with a Bisharp towering over them, pointing at helpless passers-by to be ripped to shreds with their sharp blades that cut through the flesh like a knife to hot margarine, squeezing the blood out of the body which jumps out into the air like a… damnit, I did it again. It was at that point I became a little depressed, knowing that I've been out of the business for a year now and I'm still sneaking around and having thoughts of death and destruction floating around my mind, getting in the way of any attempts to- and my thought process was cut off once again as the faint outline of a Pawniard began to move away, deeper into the dark cluster of trees. I followed him (or her, I suppose, there isn't really a difference with Pawniard), moving from tree to tree, always making sure to keep the outline in sight.

Soon enough, I saw the outline stop for a moment, and then, the outline seemingly split into two outlines of the same size and shape, much like mitosis. But, on closer inspection, it was just another outline emerging from behind the first. They moved along, muttering something that I couldn't quite hear, and soon enough, a third outline appeared. Then a fourth. Then a fifth. I've seen Pawniard in action; I knew what they were doing. It was a roving squad of Pawniard hunting for something… or someone. But I couldn't see any Bisharp, which must mean it was commanding from somewhere close by. The Pawniard were either moving away from the Bisharp to scout out, or were moving back to the Bisharp to report in. Either way, most Pawniard would never dare go further than three miles from their commanding Bisharp, lest they get caught, court-martialled for desertion, and decapitated. It seems like an efficient system for keeping order and efficiency amongst the ranks; efficient enough for many human militaries to mimic their tactics, at least.

The Pawniard, like before, were muttering to each other about something, but this time, it was just barely loud enough to hear. I heard words such as "search", "interrogate", "Scraggy", "hollow", "regroup", "commander" and "Parasite".

Parasite… hearing that name again worried me.

I managed to hold my concerns that one of the many people who want me dead or back in Kyogre's Kitchen has found me yet again long enough to see the outlines reach a particularly large tree in the heart of the cluster, and then seemingly melt into a dark hole on the bottom of the trunk, one by one. Soon, all five of the outlines had disappeared. I moved in closer to the tree, treading carefully so as to avoid rustling the leaves on the ground, which were still great in number, despite White Forest being almost one hundred percent evergreen, and found out why. The Pawniard had descended into a gaping hole on the bottom of the tree trunk, leading into a dark hollow. Without a second thought, or, hell, a first really, I managed to manoeuvre my way in to the Pawniard-sized hole, bringing back memories of ventilation shafts. Broken ones, where hot air has gotten in and made the entire building uncomfortably humid. Descending into the dark, wet, wooded tunnel, I looked ahead to see if the outlines were still there, but they were not… they must have been moving fast, possibly in a rush. There were three likely reasons for this: their commander was in danger, they were chasing something, or they had simply been ordered to regroup. If they were after me, like I thought, they were going the wrong way, and there was nothing I ever saw in White Forest that could pose any danger to a Bisharp, so that lead me to believe they were regrouping. And then I heard echoes. The kind of echoes you hear when someone is having the shit beaten out of them in 'The Oven'; grunts of pain, shouting, cursing, questioning words like "where!?" and "what!?". Anyone else would probably have just assumed they found who they were looking for and left them to it, unless they were a Gallade perhaps, but I knew I was involved in all of this, because of that one word. Parasite.

I followed the echoes deep into the hollow, using them as a sort of sonar to bounce off all the walls, thus telling me what direction to go in. The echoes got louder and louder, and I began to hear whole phrases; phrases like a somewhat rocky-voiced "Where is he!? Where's the goddamn parasite!? Answer me, you little shit!", followed quickly by a much higher-pitched squeal of "I don't know! I DON'T KNOW! Why would I know this stuff!? I've never even heard of this 'parasite'!" followed by a few shaky whimpers and sniffs.

That voice sounded familiar… the fast, high pitch, the nervous-sounding back channel noises… it was one of the locals in White Forest. A Scraggy, to be exact. This particular Scraggy was, essentially, the White Forest's equivalent of an information broker. He knew just about everything there is to know around the place, and he'll tell you… for a price. He, like most Pokémon, was a survivalist unconcerned with the human-run economy of the nation, so his price was always berries. Different kinds of berries, of course, but berries nonetheless. Now, I'm very good at keeping secrets, so even he didn't know about 'Parasite'; but it would appear that the Bisharp, and whoever it was he was working for, got the wrong idea.

After a few more minutes of literally following echoes, I saw a slight glimmer of light round the corner. Light was always a sign of some kind of presence, not that it would have mattered since the shouting was practically next-door at this point. I sidled along the wooded tunnel and took a look round the corner. There were some mushrooms scattered along the walls down there, so all I had to do was stick my head around the corner and place my cap as close to the wall as possible to disguise myself as an ordinary mushroom. I saw a chamber, which sort of resembled the inside of a hollowed out tree, with gnarled wooden walls interspersed with a floor of soil which extended upwards to cover about a third of said wooden walls. I saw the five Pawniard from earlier, now fully visible in their red-and-grey 'armour', lit up by a small fire on the other end of the room, carefully placed in the soil so as to avoid igniting the inside of the tree and burning the whole forest down. Closest to the fire was the Bisharp commander, towering over his Pawniard minions and probably making them envious of his fully dexterous fingers below his arm-blades. In front of him, propped up against the far wall, was that Scraggy. Normally when me and the Shroomish see him, he looks… well… healthy. Fit for activity. But then, in that chamber, he clearly had been beaten black and blue, with thin streams of blood trickling down from his nostrils and mixing with the tears coming from his eyes. He was visibly shaking and shivering from fear. The rocky voice, which, as was now made clear, belonged to the Bisharp, spoke out once more.

"I won't ask you again! You're in charge of information around here! You know everything! At least, that's what your goddamn customers tell us!"

"B-b-but I don't know everything! It was just a figure of speech, it's not meant to be taken literally!"

"DON'T BULLSHIT AROUND WITH ME! WHERE IS PARASITE!?"

Clearly, the Bisharp was losing his patience… a bit too much. His right arm was twitching, and with each twitch, it raised a little. If he twitched too much, he might just accidentally on purpose bisect the Scraggy in one fell swoop. Now, I'm not normally the hostage-rescue kind of Breloom, but, by that point… it wouldn't harm me to even out the ratio of deaths-to-survivals in situations involving me.

I identified each of the Pawniard's positions within the room, how and where they might attempt to corner me, which one would attack first, and at what point the Bisharp would be most likely to intervene. The last one was easy; Bisharp like to make their minions do the fighting for them, so as to help them develop as warriors; the Bisharp would only intervene as a last resort. It is a common schoolboy error in situations such as this to take out the enemy closest to you; nine times out of ten, said enemy is in plain sight of its accomplices and will get you spotted quite quickly. It is better to get behind one in the shadows on the other side of the room, even if it takes longer. Better to be a little late than a little dead.

I silently propelled myself to the other side of the hollow with my right leg, making sure to slide on the ground at a steady speed so as to not create too much friction upon landing, which can both create too much noise and hurt your feet. I was now directly behind another one of the five Pawniard… and he and his accomplices were none the wiser. It was time for a textbook takedown, as they say. I wrapped my tail around his mouth to stop him from screaming for help and I squeezed the orbs on the end of it against his face to release a small dose of thick, poisonous spores. The helpless Pawniard unavoidably inhaled the spores and was out cold before he could even attempt to slice his way out. Spores like that only kill Pokémon in large quantities, but they are more than capable of knocking the little ones out in smaller doses. How appropriate. Unfortunately, I already knew that it was practically impossible to take out all of these guys without getting detected once… the place was too close-quarters, and the light was too much. So naturally, I had to reveal myself.

I, once again, wrapped my tail around the now-comatose Pawniard, silently spun and catapulted it at the Pawniard closest to the Bisharp. He only had a few milliseconds to survey the situation before he was struck in the face with the foot of his comatose comrade, which managed to take him down; if you use someone else as a weapon, make sure they hit your enemy with the leg. The leg is the best non-lethal weapon available to you naturally.

"WHAT THE FU-"

Said the next Pawniard, before I propelled myself over to him and struck him in the face with my other foot, before spinning round and striking the two behind me in their faces with my tail consecutively, releasing stun spores for good measure. Their steel-type means they conduct electricity quite well, and they were down within seconds. Still breathing, still conscious, just paralyzed. But of course, I couldn't count on taking out the third one with a mere kick to the face. So I spun round again, and I saw him jump and lunge at me, ready to sink his blade into my flesh. This one was smarter than I thought, but not smart enough. All I needed to do was roll forward to get out of range, catapult myself off the wall in front with my tail, and while the Pawniard lands, realizes he's missed, and looks back to try again, I give him some stun spore as well. And that's exactly what happened. There I was, standing in the light, with five Pawniard on the ground; two unconscious, three paralyzed.

But, there was, of course, the matter of the Bisharp commander, who was still perfectly operational. In classic Bisharp fashion, he had sat out my little skirmish with his minions. Yes, all eleven seconds of it. The Bisharp, without saying a word, oddly enough, given his previous exchange, simply lifted his right arm and pointed at my heart, as if to say, "I shall stab you there", as is custom with Bisharp. Then he almost instantly jerked into a fighting stance, his elbows spread out, his hands, and the blades atop, pointing in my direction.

Now, as you might expect, fighting a Bisharp is more than a little tricky. The blades on the other side of their hands make it impossible to block hits without getting your arms sliced off, and hits to the chest should be aimed carefully, lest one accidentally stabs their foot on the Bisharp's chest-blades. But, being a Grass-Type, I knew how to perform Wrap, which cut down the time needed to take out one of these persistent, high-endurance swordsmen massively. The trick is to use Wrap to pull their arms away from you, preferably behind their back, remove the helmet with a swift kick or tail strike, and unleash a flurry of claw strikes on the now-unprotected face.

Bisharp are fast ones, though, and they almost always throw the first strike. This is useful to one on the defensive because the more they miss, the less accurate they'll get, and the less effective their guard becomes. This particular Bisharp started with a swing to the right; easy stuff, just duck that. Then a swing to the left, duck that. Then he tried thrusting; easily dodged, especially when they quite visibly pull their arm backwards before making their move. Then he did what I can only describe as trying to slice my head open in the same manner a boxer would break an opponent's jaw with an uppercut. I rolled backwards, out of his range, to avoid that one, and also to prompt him to try and make a powerful strike from a distance; when an enemy misses one of those, nine times out of ten, they leave themselves open to attack. Just as I expected, he lunged forward to make a powerful thrust, allowing me to roll behind him, a technique I learned from an old colleague of mine; a Golem, no less. Just like the Pawniard, he was distracted and confused by this manoeuvre, but simple stun spores would probably not work on a Pokémon this big. There was, however, the Wrap. I extended two prehensile, shining, plantlike vines from a pod concealed in my cap, stretched them forward and wrapped them around his arms, gripping tight. Using the vines, I catapulted myself forward and drop-kicked the Bisharp on the upper back, just below the neck, shoving him forward violently and making him headbutt the hollow's wall. Contrary to video game logic, his head did not get lodged in there, but it did stun him enough for me to turn him around and roundhouse his helmet off, revealing his somewhat jarhead-like head, and how appropriate, given his species' militaristic nature.

Removing a Bisharp's helmet in the middle of a fight is a sure-fire way to piss them right off, which, contrary to popular belief, is actually a good thing, because it causes them to drop their guard and start recklessly throwing hits at you, giving you plenty of opportunity to counterattack. As before, he alternated between swings to the left and swings to the right, a simple pattern to dodge, and I allowed him to corner me against the wall so he'd try that blade uppercut again. As I expected, he did, but not before I somersaulted off the wall, wrapped my vines around his arms in mid-air, and landed before launching the crazed and confused swordsman to the other side of the room, sending him straight into the wall with a hard *clang!* and landing on the ground, face-down. I waited for him to turn over before wrapping his arms for a third time, delivering my foot directly to his chest and trapping him between me and the wall. I then tightened my grip around his arms to stop him struggling before wrapping my tail around his neck, ready to break it, as a contingency plan in case he tried anything stupid. I looked back at where the Scraggy was. He was still there, watching, still bruised but looked healthy enough to move. I was going to ask some questions that I'd rather he didn't hear the answers to, so he had to go.

"Th… th-thank you for-"

"Don't mention it. Now get out of here!"

The Scraggy took hold of his loose trousers and limped away into the darkness without a second thought, clearly afraid that I might do to him what I did to his kidnappers if he tried otherwise. Then I turned back to the Bisharp, and he spoke up again.

"Why the hell don't you just kill me right now? I've been beaten by a fucking Breloom!"

"Spare me the dignity speech. Who sent you? The Codies? The Nibbies? Sagittarius Mafia? Doon's Gang?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"You're here to kill me! It's obvious."

"Wait… YOU'RE Parasite!?"

"Yes."

"Should've guessed… they told me you'd be dangerous."

"Who? Who's 'they'?"

"Some executive bastard from ZangoCorp."

"Zango? Why does a multinational electronics company want me dead?"

"They don't!"

"Then why did they send you after me?"

"They wanted me to give you a message!"

"What message?"

"They paid me to tell you to go to Aries city in Vashik; the alleyway on the left side of the building directly west of their HQ; they want to talk to you."

"How do I know this isn't some kind of trap? This isn't the first time someone's wanted to 'talk' to me."

"Don't ask me, I don't know shit other than what I already told you! They just came up to me, gave me some cash and said 'find Parasite and send him this message', blah blah blah. Besides, if they wanted you dead, they may as well have just gotten me to do it."

"Yes, and I'm sure we both know how that would've turned out. I guess I have no choice but to check out this 'meeting'. Anyway, I think it's time you took a nap."

"A na-"

Those were his last words before I karate-chopped him in the neck, knocking him out instantly. If Bisharp have taught me anything, it's that you must never leave a particularly vindictive enemy conscious after beating them in a fight. The Pawniard were of no concern; they were unlikely to try and take me out again after I single-handedly took out their commander.

ZangoCorp isn't exactly renowned for vigilantism; in fact, it's common knowledge amongst us underground people and Pokémon that ZangoCorp often collaborates with illegitimate organizations so as to bypass various tax and ethics laws. It's a wonder no-one ever questioned how they were able to set up all those Pokémon-run facilities what with all the heavy legislation governing the actual employment of Pokémon by private individuals and organizations. Besides, even if they did want me dead, I highly doubt they'd have the resources or the people to do so. I've taken out SpecOps troopers before, what chance would a bunch of corporate mercenaries have?

I already knew that my place wasn't here, in White Forest, with the other Shroomish; they didn't respect me enough, and it was getting boring. My main hope after I left the business was that I'd be able to lead an exciting life that could possibly qualify as 'normal'. Picking berries and taking out harmless Rattatas for Pokémon younger than me that didn't even respect me was not what I had in mind. Not to mention, the G-men were still after me, so chances are I'd have to leave anyway. Not unless I could get help from someone powerful. Someone influential. And ZangoCorp has plenty of those. If I was to get help from anyone, they'd be my first choice.

After making my way back outside, I ran through the heart of darkness, and I kept running. I would not stop running until I reached a plane, or a boat. Aries, being a man-made place, requires man-made assistance to get there. I was about to step into the realm of men once more, and with it, the realm of memories…

…Some of them worse than others.


	2. The Contract

_**The Contract**_

* * *

It took roughly seven hours to make it to Vashik from White Forest, although I can guarantee the journey would've been significantly longer if I went the whole way on foot. As soon as I got out of White Forest, I bolted northwards, along Pedestrian Route Fourteen, towards Undella Town on the East Coast. If you're looking to avoid trouble, the Pedestrian Routes are always a better option than the roads and highways. You'll risk running into travelling trainers, but only if you're unwise and actually venture onto the path itself and not the surrounding forests. Besides, trainers and their teams are no problem for me, and even if they just hurl a Poké Ball at first sight, something to be expected from collectors; yes, they're still around even after 'meaningless collection' was outlawed. Anyway, even if they were to chuck one at me, I know how break out of one; although the technique did take about five years of training, plus simulation, to perfect. Poké Balls work by administering a concentrated gas-based sedative after the Pokémon in question has been drawn inside by a miniature space-distortion generator (don't ask me how that works), and like any sedative, it can be overcome with practice. Of course, it doesn't work with a Master Ball, but Master Balls are rare and expensive, not to mention that Silph Co., the company that made them, no longer exists, and the workings behind it disappeared with them, so there's only a limited number of them to go around; chances are they've all been filled by this point. Anyway, I'm getting off track...

I eventually reached Undella Town, and from there I hitched a ride on board the car of some out-of-season beach goer. The guy was probably from Sinnoh if he was that desperate to escape the January snow. That car took me to a highway maintenance station in northeast Unova somewhere, where I switched rides from a car to some kind of tanker, with 'LIME JUICE' written in big, green letters down the sides of the chrome tank. I 'hitched' rides by holding onto the bottom of the cars, by the way. Wrap made keeping hold of the moving vehicles easier, which is good, because the least dignified thing to happen to me after all the stuff I've been involved in would be getting turned into a flattened bit of Quorn on the road, with a large tire mark down the middle. Anyway, that truck drove me into Vashik.

Now, Vashik is a tiny, tiny region, located on the very tip of the Unovan peninsula that extends east from the mainland (which, itself, possesses three more peninsulas that extend southwards; White Forest is on the eastern one). But despite this, state border security is quite heavy due to the extreme importance of the region, or more specifically, the importance of Aries City. Aries is a major commercial hub, being the easternmost city, making it the closest to the American coast (which, confusingly, is in the part of the world known as 'the West' by most), and thus is the main receiver of American businessmen and other such economic advancers. But it is also important to note that Aries is located on an artificial island. You see, after Sagittarius City, formerly the nation's most important port, was pretty much destroyed during the war, the government, in all its wisdom, decided that rejuvenating the already-declining city wasn't worth it and instead elected to build a new city in the giant bay in front of it, although much further south. So they drove some rocks into the bay, dumped some soil on it, and then built a city there. It was called Aries because it just so happened that another city of the same name was located directly across from the building site, which is now known as 'Old Aries'. The whole project cost over a trillion dollars and it probably would've been a lot cheaper to just completely restore Sagittarius instead of allowing it to fall into the hands of criminals and outlaws like it eventually did, but who am I to question the decisions of what the government did with all the reparations Sinnoh paid? I mean, this _is_ the same government that decided to make the economy almost one hundred percent reliant on Pokémon battling after the war in the first place. Admittedly, they did get quite a lot of private funding support; ZangoCorp International was among them, so that they could guarantee a new set of offices built in the city, which brings me back to what I should be talking about.

The tanker I was holding on to thundered over the enormous, eight-lane, white, metallic suspension bridge that serves as the main link between Aries Island and the mainland, and I just barely managed to adjust my head to an angle where I could see out the front end of the tanker properly. I saw the Aries skyline, with all the giant black glass monoliths with lights of colours ranging from orange to teal to purple scattered about and some in places wrapped around like elastic bands, standing out clearly from the night sky; it almost looked like a Rotom had gotten into the city's power grid and messed around with the lights. I suppose it's a good job it was night or else I wouldn't be able to see it at all, as the sun would be reflecting off the white bridge, causing it to gleam and blind me, much like that person I was sent after who I blinded with a laser before throwing him out the window, dropping him onto a staircase twenty stories below, leaving probably the biggest spread of brain bits I've ever seen on a concrete staircase... and I've seen more than most. Certainly not the cleanest kill ever, but I was only getting started at the time.

This wasn't good; I hadn't even entered the city yet and already thoughts of the hundreds of urban assignments, training sessions inside bricked-up basements, sneaking around in decadent hotels, apartments and offices... the business was very much a human affair to be done on a human playing field, my species was just better suited to some of the jobs offered, and that was good for my employers. Things only got worse once I entered the city proper.

The light's intensity had increased a hundred-fold, since I was closer to it, and this was not good for obscurity. Obscurity was of the utmost importance to my very survival, since the authorities would no doubt pursue in their thousands if they found out a highly dangerous Breloom such as myself was present in such a heavily-policed city as Aries. I had to stay away from the main streets, the ones with the heaviest lighting, and use the various back-alleys and lesser-used streets to my advantage. Wherever darkness was, I had to go there. Obscurity is tough during a darkness famine.

I wandered the alleyways, timing my movements across the main streets to avoid running into a policeman, or an opportunistic urban trainer (you don't see many, but they exist, alright). I had to spend as little time as possible in view of the humans due to the nature of this location; no wild Pokémon would appear here under normal circumstances. There are Pokémon that live in cities, mostly feral descendants of ones commonly kept as pets like Granbull and Persian, as well as Voltorb and Magnemite around some of the more high-tech areas, and in the dilapidated industrial types of towns, you'll find Grimer and Koffing all over the place, sucking in all the stink and breathing it out twice as spread-out and five times more malodourous than before; but at least they eat the mile-high piles of garbage that would appear in their absence. In places of a certain... reputation, one is likely to find roving gangs of Scrafty and Hitmons wandering down alleyways, beating the snot out of Pokémon and human alike. But here, in an enormous cosmopolitan metropolis where the cover of night is all but broken, you won't find any wild Pokémon (let alone a Grass-Type like me, who'd stick out like a sore thumb against the lifeless concrete and steel) roaming the place without a good reason. Many Pokémon out in the wild I've known found it baffling why the human cities are just as active during the night as they are in the day, and I'd always reply: "many Pokémon say they are superior to humans because they have no powers; well they're wrong. Humans do have their own power: technology. With that, they have effectively broken the dawn/dusk boundary that restricts most of us. For them, there is no daytime or night-time, there is just time."

The light and the humans weren't the only issue. The memories were also flooding in, corrupting every single thought in my mind and turning it to death. I see a car, I think of how "vehicular manslaughter" is a very effective way to cover up a murder. I see a curb, my mind is brought back to that moment where one of my colleagues... young, fairly new in the business, a Nuzleaf, if I remember... decided to 'curbstomp' a low-level target. I see a puddle of water on the ground, and I think of that Quagsire who always killed his targets by pinning them to the ground and filling them with water, drowning them on dry land, his smile growing more and more exaggerated as the target made glug-glug-glug noises until he or she could make them no more... at which point the Quagsire's smile would turn into a frown of disappointment, because his or her suffering had ended. Even to this to day, sometimes I look at bodies of water ranging from drips from a tap to seas, and I hear the Quagsire saying "Drink it all in, pally! Drink it up! Drink to your health! Or lack thereof..." before bursting out into hysterical laughter. Sadistic bastard, he was. I was more than a little satisfied when I heard he got shot to death by Doon's Gang machine guns outside of Cerulean. I hope they fed his corpse to a Mightyena. Some may say "aren't you being a little hypocritical? You used to murder people for a living; surely you gotta be at least a little sadistic." Fair enough, but at least I had standards.

But I digress.

I knew that Aries was built on a grid layout, with the main roads dividing up the 'areas', which were all further divided up into 'sectors', and the building I was looking for, the Joseph Albreiter Senior Memorial Building (named after the guy who came up with the idea to build Aries and later died of radiation poisoning) was located in Area IX, Sector VII, which was, thankfully, located just one area and four sectors away from the bridge I entered through (I knew the tanker I was riding on was headed elsewhere, so I had to bail out early). Fast forward about forty-five minutes, and I emerged from probably the seventy-first dark crisscrossing alleyway I'd been in to see the unmistakable visage of the building... not to mention the enormous plaza in front of the building, complete with water fountain and dedicated subway station, amongst other things. This plaza is known as, appropriately enough, the Joseph Albreiter Senior Memorial Plaza, and on the far north end of the plaza, city hall was located, in all its shaped-like-a-cube-with-some-windows-on-it glory; but I wasn't interested in that, I was interested in the building on the other side of the plaza. Like I said, the front of the building was unmistakable; just the front end of the bottom five storeys of this sixty-seven storey behemoth were dominated by a colossal window that stuck out like half a cylinder attached to the building, much like those elevators with observation windows on the side with no door, except on a significantly larger scale; and of course, said elevators were present inside, facing out the aforementioned colossal window, probably to provide people who you wish to die from a horrible elevator accident a good final view... or, in the case of someone who isn't me, just to provide a good view as they wait to get on with the daily grind, or as they retire home.

Above that five-storey stretch, there were a series of signs that only the richest of the rich corporations based inside the monolith had installed to let people know they were in there without actually going inside. You had to be quite rich to begin with to have your company based inside such a huge building in one of the most important cities in the country, so having a huge advertising sign on the front of said building as well was a sure indicator of the kind of wealth you'd be more likely to see on statistics for the world's GDPs. At the very top of this display, which stopped about a third of the way up the building, ZangoCorp's name was emblazoned, complete with the heavily stylized 'Z' and bright red lettering. What made it clear that it was _the_ single richest corporation on this side of the country? Other than how their headquarters took up the _top four floors_? The sign even had the company motto included: "ZangoCorp International. We make the revolution where others will not." Note that they say 'will' and not 'can'. It seemed to suggest that they were the only ones willing to perform a 'revolution', probably creating additional independence for Pokémon, or at least interaction beyond "we see Pokémon, we catch them, everybody happy". It's no wonder why; the man who runs the company, Jeremy "Zango" Zangerson, has a major soft spot for Pokémon, and who can blame him; he comes from a family that got its name lent to it by a whole species. Zangoose. Probably the most iconic image of the company is Zangerson, in his trademark pinstriped three-piece suit sitting in his Victorian armchair with his family's favourite Pokémon standing next to him, getting its head-fur ruffled by the good doctor's hand, a great smile on his face; which looked odd on a man with jet-black slicked-back hair, chinstrap beard and round shades for some reason. The Zangoose was standing there, eyes closed, smiling, clearly holding in laughter... it looked so adorable, so innocent, and it made me wonder if the good doctor actually knew about the backstreet deals his company is engaging in.

I saw that image on the front page of an old, discarded newspaper in the alleyway I was told to go to, in the equally black and equally glassy but not as tall monolith located directly west of the Joey Albreiter building. The alleyways of Aries are much cleaner than most, and look more like three slabs of concrete arranged like a roof-less hallway, so that newspaper stood out quite a bit. The headline read "ZANGOCORP CHIEF SUPPORTS BOMBER'S CLAIMS" with the subtitle "SLF deny responsibility for attack; ZangoCorp CEO agrees." It actually wasn't the main picture in the article; that would be the more serious-looking image of the good doctor standing in some kind of hall, hands in pockets, above an image of the flaming ruins of ZangoCorp's building in Goldenrod City following that attack three years ago... it's a wonder, really. The newspaper had outlived the city in the picture. It was under that picture that I saw some kind of odd cuboid-shaped object... something stopping the newspaper from being blown away in the wind. I walked closer to the paper and that object started making a faint beeping noise, and an even fainter red light could be seen pulsating underneath the paper. I removed the paper, revealing a black plastic slab with a red strip painted around the top, and a short antenna extending from the top. I picked it up and turned it over, seeing a small screen pulsating red, the words "new text message" having popped up, and some simple numbered and lettered buttons arranged below. It was a phone, and a rather antiquated one at that. Well, antiquated by the over-inflated standards of most humans today, at least. And the red strip... the phone seemed to have been designed for the sole purpose of reminding me of the phones that I used to communicate with my colleagues and my handler back when I was in the business. I suspected that the phone had been left for me to answer, considering how there wasn't anyone here to meet me in person.

I opened the text message, and my suspicions were confirmed. The message read, in plain, narrowed letters, "When does the façade backfire?" I recognized this phrase as a form of identification that was required by Pokémon in the business to ensure that it was them answering to each other and the handlers, in case the phone was stolen. Whoever set this up had done their research on our work ethics. What little we had. Without even thinking about it, I typed in "When the Zoroark makes a noise", and I sent it off as a reply to whomever it was that sent me the text in the first place.

About five minutes later, I heard the faint beeping noise again, except this time the phone was pulsating orange. It said "Phone call incoming". Somebody wanted to talk, with voices and all, with me, a Pokémon. The language barrier sounded like a pretty obvious obstruction to any kind of deal-brokering to me. But as I mentioned before, I needed to take every chance I could get if I wanted a realistic opportunity at shaking the Codies off my back. So I answered the call and held the phone up to my earhole. I was about to say something, but the voice on the other side beat me to it.

"Hello, Parasite."

The voice itself had an accent reminiscent of British Received Pronunciation, albeit a quite a bit deeper than the typical Hollywood depiction of the accent. I responded to his greeting in a calm, reserved manner to remain consistent with the calm, reserved greeting he gave me.

"Who is this?"

"I am the personal Pokémon translator for Doctor Jeremiah Zangerson, but everything I say, including this, is being dictated to me by the CEO himself, so for all intents and purposes, you are speaking with Zangerson."

"Uh-huh, and how are you relaying what I say back to him?"

"Irrelevant. The purpose of this call is to give _you_ information. But, if necessary, I can write down questions and hand them to the CEO."

"I see. Are you his Zangoose?"

"I don't see how that is relevant to this conversation, but yes, I am."

His posh, serious voice certainly did not match up with his cutesy appearance in that picture. The voice sounded like it would match up better with Zangerson himself. He at least looked the part.

"Fine. So, Zangerson's translator... what does he want with me?"

"Please, refer to Zangerson in the second-person. I told you, you are practically talking to him right now. It only seems natural that we cut out the middle man... or middle 'mon, in this case."

"If you insist. So... Dr. Zangerson. What do you want with me?"

"I understand that you wish to leave your business with the agency for good, but the pursuit of CODI, Marcus McBrady's men, and probably the hundreds of other lowlifes you and your agency have antagonized over the years have prevented that. Am I right?"

"...Yes."

"Well, I have some... connections, as I'm sure you know. But I have even more connections than most people think I do. How else do you think I even knew about the infamous Problem Elimination Agency, in all its secrecy?"

I had to try especially hard to stop the memories from getting to the muscles in my mouth and corrupting my very words once I heard the full name of the agency; the aptly-named Problem Elimination Agency... or PEA, if you have a thing for funny acronyms.

"The Agency was compromised... my handler had our team released to prevent us from getting arrested and executed at the end of the frying panhandle."

"Hmm, I was not aware of this. That's a terrible shame... I hope your old colleagues are in better situations than you are at the moment."

"I don't even know where they all are, or if they're still alive, and I honestly don't care... half of them were sociopaths anyway. They're probably all dead, either at the hands of the shotgun at the panhandle, or at the hands of any weapon, shotgun included, in the backstreets of Sagittarius. That's precisely what I want to avoid. That's why I don't kill anymore. You understand? I don't kill anymore."

"That's unfortunate, because I may just have the solution to all your problems. But you will, sadly, have to kill again to get it."

Mere words cannot describe how tempted I was to tell him to piss off at this point. Describing it would just dumb the level of temptation down.

"You have some nerve. This 'solution' of yours better be some kind of guaranteed miracle cure if you want to make me kill again."

"Trust me, it is. My connections are far-reaching. I have friends in the government. If I just ask, I can have you wiped from existence. Metaphorically, of course. CODI can't chase a Breloom that doesn't exist. You'll have that second chance at life you no doubt want with every ounce of your self."

"That may deter the cops, but what about the crooks? Records don't stop _them_."

"Well, then I'll arrange for you to die. Again, this'll be completely fabricated. If everyone thinks you're dead, logically, they'll give up."

"*sigh* Fine. If it'll help me sleep at night in the long run, I may as well give it a shot. Who's the target?"

"I believe you may know him from the agency. He's a fellow called Obaidallah Ibn Yaakoub Kadir, also known as 'The Botanist'."

"...My old handler..."

The handlers in the Agency were Pokémon trainers who oversaw their teams of Pokémon killers, or Pokéssassins as many liked to refer to them, known as 'Kill Teams'. The handlers reported to an overseer, who was responsible for recruiting new handlers and handing out contracts. I still don't know who they reported to, if anyone. All I ever really knew about the Botanist was that he had a Grass-Type specialization, hence his codename. We were all known by our codenames. Mine was Parasite, as I'm sure you've figured out by now. I remember some others, such as Lady, Maw, and Aroma; a Lilligant, Carnivine and Victreebell, respectively. Everything was coded and strictly business, nothing personal was ever revealed. Personal complications would just get in the way and decrease our efficiency. I can't honestly say I never considered the possibility that I'd have to kill him when I still worked in the Agency, but given the aforementioned lack of personal output, I'm sure you understand when I tell you that a large chunk of what Zangerson's translator was about to tell me was new information.

"Indeed, he is your old handler. Saudi Arabian national, got a doctorate in biology in Dubai, came to the country with dreams of being a Pokémon botanist, funnily enough, but wound up working with the military, developing all manner of biological weapons, including the infamous 'sleep bomb' created from Parasect spores, used to great effect during the siege of Cinnabar Island. It almost certainly got him interested in the... hostile kind of things. Was thrown out like many other men after the war, turned to medicine, but didn't do well. Needed to go back to combat. Got hired by one of the agency's overseers and went on to become one of the most efficient Kill Team handlers in the history of the agency, with a ninety-one percent success rate. I understand you were one of his favourite killers."

"Yes... I thought he was dead already. I always assume any former colleague of mine is dead until proven otherwise."

"Well, Kadir is very much alive and well, and it seems like he's kept his secret quite well too. He used all the money he picked up from all his contracts, plus money invested in the stock market, to buy himself a house in the middle of the Sinnoese wilderness, plus a wall of guards to protect him around the clock, extensive security systems, and a squad of servants who live elsewhere on his compound and supply him with the bare necessities for survival. He's living there under a false name, 'Massoud Al-Dubaj'. There are only a few people that are allowed inside Kadir's house: his daughter Sara, his doctor, and his guards. Kadir's doctor only checks on him when requested, once or twice a year on average, and his guards, including their chief, almost never enter the house unless they have a bloody good reason to, with the exception of his personal bodyguard, who routinely checks all his food and drink for poison. All the information I have suggests that none of them actually know what his past occupation was. As far as they're concerned, he's just your standard paranoid rich fellow."

"If someone acts paranoid, it's probably because they _are_ paranoid. Does he have information that could endanger your company or something?"

"Not exactly. He knows something, but it's of no danger to my company. It's more of a favour for some friends of mine."

"Right. Does he ever leave the house?"

"...Not to my knowledge, no."

"Okay... so you want me to break into a heavily guarded house, kill its sole occupant, and get out, preferably without being noticed. Sounds like a suicide mission to me."

"Hmm...yes, that is rather awkward."

The way he said that made me think for a second that he was leading me into some kind of trap; that he _wanted_ me to get seen and killed. But I shot that idea down, for two reasons. One: Zangerson seems like a smart enough person not to try that with me, and two: I probably would not get another opportunity like this for a long time. Then one of the new facts that I learned about my old handler came flying into my brain, down my muscles and out my mouth at full force. Not that it would have mattered, as you'll see.

"Tell me about his daughter Sara. I've never heard of her before."

"I was just about to do that. She's about fifteen years old, and like most young people in this country, or at least Sinnoh, she's an outgoing travelling Pokémon trainer. But she's also a very dutiful girl who loves her father, and being so dutiful, she likes to visit her reclusive father at least once every two months. She's probably the only visitor that Kadir welcomes with open arms inside that house."

"I see where you're going with this..."

"I'm not sure if you've tried infiltration before, but I have full confidence you will be able to enter the house with 'help' from Sara. I've had some friends track her, and she's currently making her way through Sinnoh, en route to Floarama Town. We believe her next visit to Kadir is in a week. If you can intercept her, she might just accept you into her team."

"*sigh* Okay. I'll do it. But if I get in there, kill the guy, and get out, and you fail to solve my problems..."

"Trust me. I may be an executive, but-"

"Seriously. I'm not talking to you, translator, I'm talking to _the real Zangerson_. Does he understand what is at stake here?"

"...Yes, he does. He genuinely wants to help you, and he's even willing to ignore your part in all the hits Kadir has coordinated against our company in the past."

"Oh, so is that the real reason he wants The Botanist dead? Revenge?"

"Of course not, Zangerson is a practical person who would never advocate petty revenge. He simply wants to get a friend out of a tight spot. The fact that Kadir was responsible for killing several of our employees as well is just a happy coincidence. But we're not holding you responsible. You just did your job, in the same misguided way every captured Pokémon does theirs."

"Don't remind me. What shall I do once he's dead?"

"Keep that phone on you; hide it inside your cap or whatever it is you Breloom do. There are no phone numbers kept on that phone, so you can't contact us, and it's equipped with an experimental spore sensor, so that only Breloom can use it. Zangerson will not attempt to contact you until he knows that Kadir is dead; and he'll know. Like he said, he has far-reaching connections. Once he's dead, he'll contact you to let you know he'll have you 'killed off'. It'll satisfy the police, the media, and those criminals. You'll be free. Good luck."

"There's no such thing as luck. But thanks anyway."

What I just said was probably the biggest lie i've ever told. Luck does exist, and I just lost all of of mine.


	3. Infiltration

_**Infiltration**_

* * *

It had been so long…

So long since what, you may ask? Well, I was standing ankle-deep in snow in the middle of Eterna Forest, dark-trunked trees with contrasting white cover in every direction, over a Furret. Said Furret's head was back-to-front; it was lying-face down, belly-up. Now, most people would think it's impossible for any creature to still be alive in such a position… and they'd be right. I didn't need to check its pulse to know it'd be completely flat and silent. If one was to travel back in time five minutes, they'd have seen how this Furret charged at me silently before trying to tackle me to the ground and bite me. I managed to catch him as he was jumping, but he was too fidgety to stun, and I knew what was wrong with him… so I snapped his neck. I did him a favour, really. For a second, I thought he was infected with the Pokérus-B virus, until I realized he wasn't foaming at the mouth and shouting incomprehensible babble. Plus, he was skinnier than the skinniest of Beauty Contest Pokémon, or as I like to call them, 'Starved For Cash' Pokémon… in a way, people who do that for Contests were worse than us Pokémon Killers, in the context of 'common morality'; we generally had proper reasons for killing. But anyway, it was clear that he was starving, which was not surprising at all, given the harsh climate around Sinnoh in the winter. White Forest is seen as the Mecca of the mainland during the winter for good reason; Pokémon would rather look for berries there than wait long enough for them to start seeing Brelooms as berries.

But despite all of this, killing this perhaps-unwilling assailant was… well… a little refreshing, you could say. I did very much want to stop killing for good, but years of doing it beforehand had essentially indoctrinated me into deriving pleasure from it. I hadn't killed anyone in the year-and-a-half since the Agency disbanded, and I had been searching for something better than killing… something more satisfying. Something humans would call 'love' or at least 'affection'. I always heard them talking about love, about how difficult it is to obtain, how euphoric it is, and how it can support someone for the rest of their life, even if that someone was a blind beggar on the street. But in the Agency, love was just as bad, if not worse, than Pokérus-B. It was seen as the burden to end all burdens, the one thing that can transform a super-efficient worker into a helpless blubbering mess on the floor in an instant. The pleasure of killing was brought up as a superior alternative; the satisfaction of permanently removing an annoyance of any kind, safe in the knowledge that they can never, ever annoy you again. They were right… it always was that satisfying to know you caused the one thing in the universe that is truly permanent. At least, it used to be. Now... not as much.

The idea of love captivated me, though. The ability to gain nourishment and satisfaction without having to sacrifice life like some kind of vampire was particularly appealing, especially when you consider the side-effects of killing, including having criminals and the police coming after you. This brings me back to where I was. I was on the very edge of Eterna Forest, which is so dense that the covering of leaves managed to stop a substantial amount of the raging snowstorm from breaching it; not that that stopped the wind sweeping it in from the side, allowing a neat sheet of snow to cover the forest floor. Just a few seconds away was the raging arctic plain that was the Floaroma Meadow. It took me about twelve hours to 'hitchhike' all the way to Sinnoh from Vashik, except this time I mostly relied on water transport; some of it organic, some of it artificial. I had, about twenty minutes before this situation, been 'conversing' with a wild Pineco in the hopes of acquiring further information about Sara Al-Dubaj. It went like this…

"Does she appear here often?"

"Yeah!"

"What does she look like?"

"Red hair, two ponytail, tanned, grey yellow black!"

"Grey yellow black what?"

"Covering! The not natural stuff!"

"You mean clothes?"

"Yeah! Why you looking for her?"

"None of your business, just tell me if she was here."

"She appear here two hour ago, stop for berry, now she gone out toward the snow field!"

"Hmm… do you have any Alleged Berries?"

"Uh… yeah, I have Alleged Berry. Why you want those, they be very dangerous!"

"I don't care, just give me some, or you go kaboom."

"If you want berry, you get berry…"

I should point out that I was threatening to shake him off the tree during the whole conversation. He was certainly lacking in the communication department; although the same thing could be said of most wild Pokémon, being wild and all. But at least he was smart enough to understand my demands and a good thing too. If I had killed him, letting him drop to the floor and shatter into a shower of wooden shrapnel and blood… it would have only magnified the effect of killing that Furret… and maybe I would've derived full enjoyment from it. I can't have that now.

That aside, I had laid out my plan to get myself in the possession of Ms. Botanist, which is precisely why I took the earlier opportunity to acquire some Alleged Berries. The Alleged Berry… shaped like a diamond, and true to its form, hard in every way imaginable. A sickly pale green colour and tastes bitter enough to make an Olympic drinking-gamer want to eat mud. It also has the capability to induce a state of feverish coma if enough are eaten in a short time span. Said state will disappear completely after about seven hours, but that doesn't stop those who don't know any better declaring that the consumer has acquired a terminal illness of some kind. I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise to know that they were used in the development of biological weapons during the war, and The Botanist was always using them to get us inside people's houses under the guise of a sick Pokémon, and then have us stab them in the back when their guard was down. If Zangerson was telling the truth and The Botanist was also involved in bio-weapons, it really is no question as to why they named the Alleged Berry after the so-called Alleged Berry War. It was also a real shame that I couldn't just use this trick to get inside The Botanist's house… it'd be a cruel and fitting irony, but alas, his guards would just throw me out into the street to remove the risk of any fake illnesses killing their boss.

So I, instead, had to use the trick on his unsuspecting daughter. The storm raging in the Floaroma Meadow was strong, and if I've learned anything from your average Pokémon trainer, it's that they're too stubborn to use navigational aids; they have to do everything 'naturally', the idiots. So she was almost certainly still there. I scanned over the arctic plain with a Braviary's eye, and I spotted a fairly vague figure which resembled a girl of fifteen or sixteen years' old. That was my silent call to silent arms, as it were. I chowed down on my coma-inducing berries, which left the aforementioned sickeningly bitter taste in my mouth, only for it to be stacked on top of more of the same taste as I violently gnawed through them all, ice-cold juice running down my mouth, my vision blurring and my hand-eye coordination worsening. I managed to regain some degree of concentration long enough to spot her again and force myself to drop the last few berries and run over to her in an admittedly very comical fashion, flailing my arms from left to right. The next step was simply to run over and pass out in front of her. Another thing I know about your average Pokémon trainer is this: all but the most deplorable of them swear an oath to never, _ever_ let a sick Pokémon die, wild or no. We at the Agency all used to love how easy to manipulate they are…

With my head swaying left and right, up and down, my hearing was becoming fainter by the second. The strong crunching sound that one normally hears when walking in thick snow had been reduced to a mild patter. My feet were so numb I couldn't even feel the blanket of grass concealed underneath the snow, which during the rest of the year would be littered with multicoloured flowers. My vision had become so blurry and greyed-out that by the time I was half-way to the girl, she still resembled nothing more than a vague, amorphous shape in the storm. I seemingly pattered along as fast as I was allowed to, but the berry's laws on running speed were becoming increasingly draconian. As I slowed down to a practical walking pace, the vague blur had grown in size by a considerable degree, but it was still just a vague blur. My vision was dominated by grey, but pitch black was beginning to invade. The only reason I had even made it this far in this weather is because the berry's juices had turned the heating up to eleven and created the illusion that I was swimming around inside a boiler.

The vague shape in the storm finally resembled something that was close to me, as opposed to miles away from me, and I heard some muffled noises coming from it. My work was done. I keeled over onto the cold, hard snow and let the black consume my vision, while I lost all control over my body. I felt like I was just fading away into nothingness, and it felt relaxing. Was this what it was like to be on the receiving end of death? That is a question I had asked myself before, and my answer was… probably. If it was, that made death a mutually beneficial agreement.

* * *

The black in my vision slowly began to dissolve, revealing a tiny, concentrated piece of dark brown in the centre. As the black receded, the brown receded too, brightening up into a dark yellow-orange. Then the black disappeared completely, and the light began to pierce my vision, forcing me to slam my eyelids shut for a moment, allowing the black to return at full force. The black was simply too relaxing and peaceful, I didn't want to see colour again for at least a few more hours. It was at that point I realized I had regained some degree of sense in my body. My head, still kettle-hot, could now be controlled with some effort, and my upper torso and arms were beginning to tingle with the force of red-hot pins, as if some kind of hell spawn was trying to wake me up. With the recovery of additional sense in my torso, I painstakingly rolled over onto my side… and with that came the realization of where I was. I was in a bed, and a very comfortable one at that, with a rather thick, puffed-up duvet covering me. I could neither smell medicine nor hear the tip-tap of high heeled shoes on tiled floors. I was certainly not in a Pokémon centre. Whoever it was that picked me up after I fell unconscious took me to their house, or someone else's house. My memory of the whole situation was still a bit foggy. You know how it is.

Then suddenly, without warning, I felt a furry paw grasping me underneath my neck, which produced a similar sensation on my skin as being branded; not that it mattered, since the rest of my body felt so overheated anyway. Then I heard an unfamiliar voice, with a vaguely American accent; the standard accent of the country, so I had no idea what to expect.

"If you're awake, turn over and open your eyes."

I did as he said, and I saw a Watchog before me, in that standard Watchog pose, standing erect with arms on his sides and head held high, as if he was watching me from five miles away and not five centimetres away. Or he used to be one of the in/famous scouts for the Sinnoese Oranges in the war and hadn't broken his old habits. I suppose I don't really need to propagate the stereotype of all Watchog being Orange scouts, when it's been propagated more than enough already.

"So, you're awake and about time too. Sara was starting to irritate me with her anxiety about whether you'd live or not. But I wouldn't worry about her too much. You're in good hands."

"Who… are you?"

"They call me 'Rings', because of the rings in my eyes. It's stupid, I know, but you'd better get used to it. She names all her Pokémon like that."

"What do you mean her Pokémon? I don't even know her… I'm not part of her team…"

"Clearly, you don't know Pokémon trainers very well. They may be noble, but they're also opportunistic. If they nurse a sick Pokémon back to health, it's theirs, simple as. Seriously though, you'll be fine. You could do a lot worse in this backwards-ass region."

Of course, I knew all of that already, but I had to keep up an act of ignorance and naiveté, which was certainly made a lot easier by the fact that I still legitimately didn't feel well at all. Trainers may be easy to fool, but their Pokémon are anything but easy, especially not the ever-vigilant Watchog. This 'Rings' person would blow my cover in a heartbeat if I displayed any prior knowledge of who Sara is.

"So… who is this trainer, anyway?"

"She's a nice young girl called Sara Smith… well, her real name's Sara Al-Dubaj, but her mother would rather she forgot about her father. Don't ask me why, it's some real complicated shit that would probably just confuse your feverish head even more, haha."

"Heh, yeah… so, it's… Sah-ra, right?"

"No, it's pronounced 'Shah-ra'. It's spelt like that, but it isn't pronounced like that. Arabic naming customs and all."

"Got it… so, where am I?"

"I'll just give you the short version: you're in Floaroma Town. I don't think I need to explain to you why she took you here instead of a Pokémon centre, heheh. Double entendres aside, you've been out for about six hours now. She had a doctor come over and have a look at you, and apparently you ate quite a few Alleged Berries. Not very smart, if I'm honest, but you are a wild Pokémon, after all. No offence. Although, with that said, you do have quite a good grasp on language for a wild 'Mon. Have you had another owner before?"

"Um… yeah, I think so. Can't remember who they were, though…"

"That's a shame… or maybe not, given the people around here. I'm telling you, man; Sara is a gem in a sea of shit. Everyone here sees Pokémon as mere playthings to be enslaved and sent to battle, and force kids like Sara to do so under the threat of a shitty future for them. This whole region is just a zoo of dinosaurs, where everyone still clings to the savage 'traditions' of the Old Natives! Worst part about it is that Timmer would have almost certainly taught these people a few lessons on how to be civilized had it not been for that fucking volcano! *sigh* Sorry, I got a little sidetracked. I feel strongly about this."

"I understand."

He certainly wasn't joking; even I have to wonder what the Sinnoese are thinking sometimes. It was the only region in the whole country that still practiced the ritual of the Pokémon Journey. The rest of them had all abolished the practice under President Timmer in order to make the country less of a laughing stock amongst the international community. I would be satisfied if they just decided to invade Sinnoh again. No people, no problems. Ugh… I must stay focused…

I turned my head away from Rings to get a view of the rest of the room. The walls were beige, as was the carpet, the duvet and pillow were white, and there was a single fair-wooded table on the right side of the bed, with a lamp emitting an orange light, which gave the rest of the room an orange tone. Other than that one table and a small wardrobe on the left side of the bed, where Rings was standing, the room was unfurnished. It certainly resembled a spare bedroom… and it reminded me of the old CODI safe house I was sent to in order to eliminate an honest agent of theirs… tried to kill her cleanly, but ended up sticking her head directly into a computer screen. I had to take her out of the screen so I could make sure I killed the right person, but it was no good, for her face was completely mangled and unidentifiable. I just had to assume I killed the right person, which I did, of course.

Back on topic, I had, by this point, just about fully recovered my motor functions and could conceivably get out of bed if I wanted to, but I decided to remain in order to keep up my cover in front of the vigilant. I looked back to him; he looked as if he was about to say something else, but before he could open his mouth again, the door handle on the left wall steadily lowered, and just sort of stayed there for what seemed like an hour, even though it was only about five seconds. Then the door opened at an agonizingly slow speed, and in came the girl herself.

No longer a vague grey blur, the girl appeared to be short but quite well-built, with a bit of fat around the limbs and torso, but healthily so, and average-sized breasts; a welcome change from the dangerously skinny women with breasts that would probably break their spine that human men often find themselves gawking over. She had tanned skin, to be expected, given her ancestry, and her hair was dark red. Obviously, she had dyed her hair, since no human I've ever seen had naturally red hair, and no, I don't mean ginger, I mean literal red. It was obviously a relic of those troubled times when the whole nation was essentially Sinnoh mark two, when the Pokémon trainer subculture dominated; almost every single youth older than ten and younger than eighteen had 'wacky' hairstyles of every colour of the rainbow, combined with a, how you say, eccentric fashion sense. It was so prolific that some people felt confident carrying over these strange hairstyles into adulthood. These things were telltale signs of the subculture's Old Native origin. The girl's hairstyle itself was fairly normal, however; just two simple pigtails. She was wearing white bead earrings, a black turtleneck jumper, brown trousers, and dark grey socks, and she was carrying a ceramic teal mug in her hand. Then she turned around and revealed her face. It was rather narrow, but at the same time very round, much like an oval. Her nose didn't protrude out that much, and her eyes were small and dark brown. If I was human, I'd probably say she looked quite pretty; not sexually so, but still. But of course, looks were irrelevant. It was not only her connections that mattered to me, but also her position. Namely, her position of a team of Pokémon that I was about to enter. I had heard that most of the good Pokémon trainers always show affection towards their team members. So perhaps there was more to this than just using her to get to her father. Perhaps I could experience affection first-hand, and see what it's all about. I knew that, once I got it, it would either make me or break me, like a person who was just about to drink alcohol for the first time. Either the satisfaction of affection would surpass the satisfaction of killing and I could finally live like a normal 'Mon… or I would just completely fail to comprehend it. Only time would tell. But for now, the girl spoke her first words aimed at me.

"Oh hey, you're awake! Cool! I tell you something, B. I was really shocked to see one of you guys outside in this weather; I thought you were going to die! It certainly didn't help that I've always wanted a Breloom, because I've been lacking in the anti-dark-type department lately. It seems like everybody's using dark-types nowadays, thinks it makes them 'edgy' or something like that. Well, not me! There's more to it than that! Heh… sorry, I'm rambling, aren't I?"

With that, she placed the mug down on the bedside table. Inside was a purplish liquid with vapour rising out the top. It was probably Chesto Tea, a hot drink made specifically to stimulate one's energy, much like Coffee in other countries. The mere fact that she was giving me that instead of some kind of medicine suggested that she wanted me up and moving as soon as possible. She was determined, alright. I could already tell I'd have a long session of combat restraint ahead of me… annoying.

"Tsk, what was I thinking, I haven't even introduced myself. My name is Sara, pronounced 'Shah-ra', remember. I'm going to be the best damn trainer ever! And you are…?"

"A Breloom" I said with probably the most honesty I've ever expressed. The word 'Breloom' was, of course, the only word she'd ever hear me say due to her inept ears, or my inept vocal chords, depending on what scientist you ask. Even to this day, there's never been an accepted explanation for why Pokémon can understand humans, but not vice versa.

"Of course you're Breloom! Y'know what? I love you guys! With your little frills around your necks, and your long, muscular legs… you're damn awesome! Too awesome for just plain 'Breloom'! You need a better name to emphasize how cool and… mushroomy you are! Yeah…"

Already, I was completely dumbfounded by what was going on here. She spoke to me like no other human has spoken to me; fast, energetic and bubbly. All other humans that have spoken to me, which are few in number, have all been largely monotone and serious, as that was all that was required of them; give me the information I need and leave me to it. And my name… names are not meant to be an indicator of 'coolness' and 'mushroominess'. They are labels assigned for convenience's sake, and even then only when necessary. Hence my codename 'Parasite', assigned to me so The Botanist wouldn't contact Maw when he wanted to contact me instead, and other such instances. Not to mention telling me apart from other Breloom when encountered, since humans cannot detect the pheromones that make each individual Pokémon identifiable.

"Anyway, you better drink that up if you don't want to miss dinner! You're gonna need all the energy you can get if you don't want to fall behind when we start trekking tomorrow! Trekking all the way to Snowpoint City, it's gonna be awesome! You're one lucky Stool-man, you are! Hm… Stool-man… nah. Wait, I know! Mister Stool! That's perfect! It'll lure people into a false sense of security and it'll be so hilarious!"

Mister Stool… I must be honest; I didn't see what was good about that name when it came to fulfilling the aforementioned function of a name. Granted, it would identify me, but one should not reveal the name to one's enemies, only to one's accomplices, so luring an enemy into a false sense of security was out of the question. If you do things properly, the enemy should be in a true state of security when they die; and she wanted… hilarity, of all things? Something that would likely create a huge distraction?

I must admit, I was a little sickened by this choice of name. It was so inefficient, it hurt.

* * *

About half an hour later, I found myself standing on the white tiled floor of a kitchen, surrounded by counters that were of a dark brown wood, with bright granite-like tiles on top, and additional cabinets attached to the walls above. Directly in front of me was the kitchen sink and the stove, and above that, a window. The blinds had not been pulled, so snow-covered pine trees and a wooden fence were visible beyond the night-time snowfall. It had calmed down since earlier, and the light of Floaroma Town was being reflected off the snow and shot back at the cloudy sky, making the sky a bit brighter than it would be if there was no snow. To my left were more counters and a doorway on the bottom-left corner of the room. Behind me were a bare wall and another doorway, leading into a living room. I was facing away from the living room, but it was clear the television was on, due to the erratic light and crackly-sounding voices coming from over there. To my right were four more Pokémon; from left to right, there was Rings, a Machop, a Magmar and a Cinccino, all of whom were facing away from the lounge like me. Beyond them was another counter, with a gap at the bottom. There was no wall behind this counter, there was instead a long dining room, containing a dark wooden dining table, with eight chairs of the same dark wood surrounding it, and several cabinets and pictures furnishing the room. I didn't really get a close look at most of them, but I did see a dark green vase with some Unown letters emblazoned around it, and what resembled a stylized picture of Arceus. Looked like a Picasso knock-off, if you ask me. But it made a nice change from the Renaissance pictures of Arceus you see in just about every other Sinnoese house. Up on the counter to my left was a rather old-fashioned-looking radio. The voices coming from the radio managed to cover up the voices coming from the television.

"…So, President Timmer, there have been rumours circulating amongst the scientific community that the Pokérus-B epidemic in the Indigo Plateau regions will not 'die out within three years' as was originally believed. How do you plan on rebuilding the areas affected by the Mount Silver eruption and relieving the added stress the refugee camps have been placing on communities whilst simultaneously preventing the spread of the virus? To many people in these camps, it seems like they've been waiting long enough."

"Well, that is a good question, Gabby. The solution is quite simple: we rely on one hundred percent human workforces. I am aware that, if we go down this route, the reconstruction of the regions will take a significantly longer time without the assistance of Pokémon labour, particularly those larger settlements such as Goldenrod and Saffron, as well as my hometown, Pewter City, but one must remember; we cannot always rely on Pokémon to solve our problems for us. If we want to give a good impression to the rest of the world, we must solve our problems like everyone else does; by ourselves and ourselves alo-"

The President was suddenly cut off in his speech by Sara, who walked into the room via the lounge doorway and quickly switched off the radio, as if she was in a hurry to do so. I muttered to Rings.

"Why was she so quick to do that? That sounded important."

"Probably because they mentioned the Pokérus-B virus."

"Hmm?"

"Umm… it is best you didn't ask. It's kind of a personal issue. With me as well, not just her."

"What do you mean, 'personal'?"

"Look, I'll tell you later, now's not the best time! Now is a time for eating and relaxing!"

"Fair enough."

All five of us then fell into silence for the next five minutes or so while our food was being prepared. I was certainly not hungry, for my mind was already full trying to comprehend why my new co-workers would be keeping secrets from me. I am not used to having secrets kept from me by colleagues. Of course, keeping secrets from the general public was a matter of routine, but in order to operate at full efficiency, a Pokémon Killer had to know all the information that was useful to them; things of a 'personal' nature simply did not exist. If any Pokémon Killer was found out to have been keeping 'personal' secrets, they most likely would have been killed themselves to stop them from distracting their colleagues and jeopardizing the full and proper operation of the Agency as a whole; and really, what does 'personal' even mean? To me, it comes across as keeping secrets for the sake of keeping secrets. Completely pointless.

As I pondered this, Sara arrived in the room, holding a tray with some objects on top that I could not see. She put the tray down on the counter to our left and started talking to someone on the other side of the doorway.

"Hey, thanks for letting me stay here again, David! It's really generous of you, especially what with all these… TMs you've been hiding in the basement."

"No problem!" said the voice of the unseen 'David' figure. I looked back to Rings to ask him another question in my long parade of questions that I had marching through my brain.

"Who is this David person?"

"David Alexander? He's the guy who owns this house. He's an old friend of Sara's, but as it happens, he's also a criminal scumbag who deals in counterfeit TMs. The bloody things themselves should be a crime… programming a Pokémon's mind… just sickening."

"Who does he work with?"

"Doon's Gang, mostly, although it's not been unknown for him to take orders from the Sagittarius Mob on occasion."

"Y'know, I once saw him with one of Doon's Lieutenants! Some guy called Solomon, I thinks his name was" Said the Cinccino. It was clearly a male Cinccino; his voice was quite gravelly and unfitting for his species, many may consider. He continued.

"Solomon said that David and his little gang were behind on their quota or somethin'. That was two weeks ago, and as far as I know, he's still behind on his quota. I thinks that David's little gang should run someplace else, or he'll be dead within the month."

"From Doon's Gang? Right…" I said in disbelief. If anything, Doon's Gang are just a bunch of harmless anarchist hoodlums covered in tattoos, whose members will occasionally rob a store or stab a homeless person, but not much else. I remember their reign of terror in the Indigo Plateau regions about five years after the war ended. Mrs. Doon was the only person for miles who had the courage to stand up to Team Rocket, and spent a lot of time sabotaging their operations and harvesting their money like Grim Reapers. Giovanni didn't even care; he had all the support he needed amongst the opportunistic youth and the disillusioned former soldiers around, and his Game Corners raked in the big dollars daily, which made up for it easily; or so he thought. But then Team Rocket disbanded, twice, and Doon quickly picked up their pieces and swooped in to take command of the underground Pokémon trafficking trade, and had her enforcers, most of them serial killers fresh from The Oven, to patrol the streets with pistols and shotguns to enforce her will. But then it all came crashing down on them when Timmer starting reinvigorating the police to combat their blatant, out-in-the-open crimes, coupled with the arrival of Marcus McBrady and his Sagittarius Mob, who tend to be a lot more discreet in how they handle things. Then of course, Mount Silver erupted and destroyed most of Doon's territory. Now Doon and her little gang are just insignificant shadows of their former selves.

With that knowledge, I began thinking that David really wasn't breaking the law correctly. He certainly wasn't discreet, openly admitting to people like Sara that he was involved in crime, and he was working with the wrong people. With Doon's Gang, you'll most likely get caught by the police within a day or two of working with them, and if you don't, Doon will probably think you aren't doing it right and demand you be even more obvious. But before I could think any more of how screwed David was, the Cinccino began talking again.

"Who are ya, anyways? I never seen yers around before."

Rings decided it would be appropriate to speak in my place here, for whatever reason. "His name is Mister Stool. Sara found him collapse in front of her out in Floaroma field, so she brought him back here and let him join."

"Well, I honestly don't give a shit about the circumstances surroundin' your arrivals. Welcome to the team, Mister Stools. They calls me 'The Dust'. The Watchog there is Rings, as I'm sure he's told yers already. That Machop there is called 'Chunk', and the Magmar lady is 'Maggie'. There's another guy called Blueball, but he's at the hospitals right now."

"Hello!" said Chunk and Maggie simultaneously. I could tell them apart fairly easily, even when they were talking at the same time. Chunk had a rather nasally voice, while Maggie's voice sounded a bit rough, in contrast to the gentle voice females are stereotypically supposed to have.

Suddenly, a few bowls were laid down in front of us. They were ceramic bowls with the sides upturned, not at all like the bowls that most use for Pokémon, which resemble the bowls they use for cats and dogs in other countries. Each of them was filled with a reddish mashed-up substance, peppered with tiny crystalline particles on top of it. A nostalgic flare was lit; this was Neverem Mash, which is, essentially, a selection of numerous high-energy berries mashed together to create a dish that produces as much restoration and stimulation in its consumers as possible. Its name was coined by the people running Pokémon military training camps in the Neverem region. The mash tasted very foul to Pokémon and human alike, but the amount of energy it gave easily made up for it, which is why almost all of the berries required to make it were given to the military, making the mash particularly rare amongst civilian trainers. Only the most determined of them would go through the time and effort required to acquire the ingredients. They used to feed us this on a regular basis when I was with the Agency, hence the nostalgic flare. I must admit, my confidence in my mission was raised. But I lost my appetite from what followed.

"Eat up!" said Sara. "I know it tastes like shit, but you'll love me for it later!" And then she left.

There was that word again. Love. I would most likely be grateful for her feeding me this later on, but love? This mysterious love they keep going on about can't possibly be this easy to obtain. This seemed like a good a time as any to inquire about love to the others.

"May I ask, how exactly does she… treat you all, anyway?"

"Well!" Chunk said, almost immediately after I asked. "She always gets us the right food, always gets us the best PokéBlocks, and she loves us! That's saying something for a place like this."

"No kidding." Maggie interrupted. "I've seen most of the trainers around here stay perfectly one hundred percent true to the trainer stereotype. Idiots who make a living enslaving Pokémon and constantly kicking them up the ass so they can hope for a good living later on in life, which they certainly will not get. That stereotype seems to ring true for most. My old trainer was a bitch like that. She would always kick me up the ass whenever I didn't meet her high expectations. Sara's different. She actually forgives us when we make mistakes."

Forgiveness? A useless concept. There is no point in allowing one to continue making mistakes when they could be taught otherwise.

"Her expectations are high, sure, but their expectations are all high. It's how things work around here. You don't do well in the league, a future of shit awaits you."

"Liderally! Shovellin' shit mounds at the day care centre!" The Dust interrupted.

"Exactly" Maggie continued. "She's also particularly notorious among some of her comrades for quitting battles and breaking rules so we could get out in one piece. In her last gym battle at Pastoria, Blueball took an overpowered water gun hit to the leg and it was dislocated. She quit the whole battle in front of everybody, quite a humiliating prospect for most trainers, just so she could get him to safety."

She shouldn't stop a whole operation just to ensure the safety of one element of it. A good Kill Team does not break down just because one cog has been removed. The individual is not vital. This system that Sara's team operated on however…the whole system was just… full of inefficiencies. I couldn't see a single practical benefit of any of this 'love'. Was this love? …Was it?

I began to feel sick. The mere sight of the Neverem Mash only served to churn my stomach acids even more at this point.

"Um… will you excuse me? I appear to have lost my appetite…" I said.

"No problemo!" Said Chunk. The way he said that was the final trigger, I am sure of it.

I ran out of the room, out the front door… and I vomited. I vomited up every single Alleged Berry I had eaten earlier that day, and then I vomited up all meals I had eaten the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that. I puked the night away, and finally the black returned to my sight and I keeled over into the snow again. A part of me wished it was permanent this time. But I killed that part of me just seconds after it dare to challenge the terms of my contract.

'My contract'. I'm beginning to sound more and more like my old self.


	4. Work Ethics

_**Work Ethics**_

* * *

As I'm sure you've guessed by now, the black was not permanent. I don't know whether I should be pleased or disappointed that that was the case, given how it would've at least stopped me from killing anything else. I woke up a second time the morning afterwards in the same bed as the first, got given another mug of Chesto Tea and then I was forced out of bed, out of doors and into a Poké Ball. It was that feeling I wasn't used to, that strong, almost electric tingling feeling one received when they are struck by the space distortion generator, and knocked out in an instant by the potent sedative that it delivered with it. Next thing I knew, I was standing in the middle of a snowy forest in front of some big bearded Hiker guy with a Geodude. Of course, since Sara was a trainer, I'd have to battle other people's Pokémon on the way to Snowpoint City. It was irritating, because I had to consciously hold back the fight in me so I didn't kill them. Even so, a few Geodudes were short work; just a quick Brick Break and they're down and out. This was good, because me and Chunk, the team's resident 'Big Guy', despite being small, nasally-voiced, and generally quite immature, had to deal with an insane amount of them, each one harder to not-kill than the last. It's as if these Hikers never use any other Pokémon. We met a lot of these guys since the route that Sara insisted on involved a climb on the sides of Mount Coronet. Thankfully it was only the lower areas, since the higher cliffs are far too sheer to scale without the proper gear, not to mention that much of the mountain is off-limits due to its religious significance to the Originists. 'Do not tread on sacred ground!' they'll say, 'Or the Original One shall forsake thee, for even the slightest patter can create the echoes of awakening.' The Tomeis, Book of Coronet, Chapter Three. Learnt that one courtesy of The Veteran, another handler for the Agency. Resident Tomeis expert, and appropriately so, given his background included being a Sinnoese Orange war hero. In fact, I recall a colleague of his, a big guy codenamed The Muscle, once going on a cooperative mission with The Botanist on Mount Coronet. The target was a Hiker who was wanted by the government for… something. Drug dealing, most likely. I mean, they did find over thirty pounds of crack cocaine in his backpack after The Muscle had his Golem, the same one who taught me that rolling trick, steamroll him right off the edge of a cliff and send him plummeting hundreds of feet. Might have created a pretty big brain-spread if it weren't for the fact that he got impaled on a giant stalagmite. He's probably still there…

Huh. Thinking of Golem actually raised my spirits somewhat. As I was fighting the endless Geodudes with the occasional Probopass thrown in to break the monotony, I thought of the experience these Geodudes could attain from battling me. Think of it like your average Role Playing Game. You gain experience points from battling enemies; the stronger the enemy, the more EXP you get. Obviously, there's no counter with EXP in real life, but it's the same principle. Any Geodude that survived an encounter with me (in this trek, all of them) would become stronger than its brethren; strong enough to warrant the evolutionary process into a Golem. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, what does not kill you makes you stronger. Always was my favourite philosopher, Nietzsche.

Anyway, after about fourteen whole hours of this, it got dark once again, so Sara set up camp in a clearing at the bottom of a mountainous drop, with more snow-covered trees on the other side. Although, to be fair, it had mostly been rocks and a few caves on the way there. Sara was surprisingly good at the whole climbing business. She didn't even bother with harnesses or any climbing gear minus a pickaxe. She just climbed over everything in her path short of a straight cliff. I could only hope her father hadn't been training her… after all, he was able to navigate the cliffs, being a strong proponent of Parkour with its 'the shortest distance between two points is always a straight line' rule, and if he'd been training her one technique he picked up in the Agency, who knows what other secret knowledge he could have imparted? If he was stupid enough to actually tell her about the Agency, then my mission would probably have been quite short-lived.

That revelation came to me soon after Sara set up camp for the evening at the aforementioned clearing at the bottom of a mountainous drop, so I spent most of that night surveying and observing Sara and the rest of her team, collecting intelligence and finding weaknesses I could exploit in case things went completely up the creek. I already determined that Sara's way of handling her Pokémon was hopelessly inefficient, as she would stop everything if just one of her Pokémon was injured; something that doesn't happen often in regular battle, but when dealing with me… you see where this is going. Really, I'd only need to take out one of them, but which one? Chunk is tough and on several occasions it looked as if he couldn't feel any pain; plus, being a Machop, he's obviously strong enough to just toss me away if he picked me up. Maggie is bad news combat-wise since she's a Fire-Type, my prime weakness, and she's very ferocious thanks to her history of abuse; that kicking-up-the-ass ritual she mentioned previously was just the tip of the iceberg, I assure you. The Dust isn't particularly strong, but he's very crafty and tactically aware. I've seen him in action, and I knew that he knows what he's doing to the letter. His style of fighting actually kind of reminded me of my own, if you took away my vines and replaced them with giant white head-tails. So it'd have to be Rings. Rings is a lot like an old general; he leads, but he doesn't directly engage. He is by far the oldest member of the team, everyone respected him and Sara held him particularly close to her heart, in this state of affection that I was left out of, and quite frankly I found it overrated. It was strange, then, when you consider how two-faced he is. One second he's cheerful and jovial, and the next he's cynical and angry, the perfect backdrop for his rants about the state of the world. His mood swings were something of a curiosity when they were not an annoyance, but in combat, they would be of little consequence. When I saw him fight, he was indeed ferocious, but mediocre. As I said, Maggie was like that, too, but she at least was a Fire-Type, posing a real danger to me. If everything went to hell, then I'd have eliminated Rings. With him gone, Sara would have rushed him out of there, taking the rest of the team with her for their safety. And, while I'd have just screwed up the mission for a while, I'd at least still be breathing long enough to figure out a new plan.

At least, that's what I thought.

Of course, Sara's work ethics are drastically different from mine… if you don't anger her. A difficult feat, I had heard, but possible if certain conditions are fulfilled. What are these conditions, you might ask? Well, after we had been at camp for two hours and eaten up our second serving of Neverem Mash (I actually ate it this time, having emptied my stomach of sick generated from inefficiency the night before, as you know), I had a little private conversation with Rings round an outcrop of rocks some five metres away from the camp proper, by the bottom of the drop. It looked like there had been a cave entrance there before. Reminds me of that Electrode who massacred an entire poaching party of seven by blowing up at a cave entrance, sending rocks tumbling down. Quite a big splatter, from what I heard. Bloodied bones were being found in the area by the local Rangers and Backpackers for weeks to come. With methods like that… must have been The Sting In The Tail. Young handler, she was. Very reckless. Very messy. Ahem, nevertheless.

There I was, sitting on a rock, trying to act like a five-years-old boy does when he's listening to his grandfather tell a story. Fitting, given Rings' age. It was rather dark, but light was provided the fireplace at the camp, which, being the only source of light for kilometres, cast it all around in great yellow swathes. Rings had decided not to sit down, for some reason, instead taking to pacing back and forth on the rough ground.

"So…" I said. "I believe you have some things to tell me."

"Excuse me?"

"At David Alexander's house, I asked you why Sara was so quick to turn off the radio once the Pokérus-B virus was mentioned."

"Oh yeah, those things… I- I don't…"

"Everyone else knows, don't they? It must be important. If I know, I won't risk upsetting you greatly."

"Why don't you ask them?"

"I'd be more than happy to, but they've all been telling me to ask you directly. The Dust was quite insistent. He tells me it's good to 'let the past breathe' on occasion. That way it won't make you 'choke on it' or something like that. You can trust me."

"But you've only been with us a day. How can I really trust you?"

This is where things started getting really irritating. It was bad enough that Rings was still withholding crucial information from me for no discernible reason, but I had to use foreign concepts that I barely understood, like 'trust', one of the most pointless things I've ever heard of. Apparently 'trust' is when an abstract bond between two individuals has been made strong enough to allow for clear passage of assistance and information, or something along those lines. Counter-productive? Quite so.

"Do you honestly think I'd try and misuse the information in any way? …Do you?"

"Well… nobody's done it before… but there's always a first time… although…"

And so he stood there for two whole minutes in painstaking thought, while I sat there in painstaking patience. Illogical hindrances… how tiresome.

"Alright fine, I'll tell you. It's not as if you could really harm anybody with this information."

"I'm listening."

After all, if things went according to plan, I wouldn't need to harm Sara or the rest of her team. Just her father. Keep things clean and all that.

"Well, the thing is… the team she has right now… the team you joined… this isn't her first team. She got her first team way back, when she was only ten years old. I was actually the second Pokémon she caught, the first being her starter, Bonaparte. She completed her rounds here with only four Pokémon: me, Bonaparte, Wrapping Lightning and Peabrain; then she went on tour in Unova, where she got two more, Serps and Camp Dracula. Yes, her naming habits were even worse back then, but trust me, that was the best part of her. All this time, she… conformed perfectly to the Sinnoese Trainer stereotype. She saw all five of us as burdens to be used and exploited for all their worth before she hopefully made it big, and then preferably discarded like trash. With every failure, she swore at us, humiliated us, occasionally beat us. And she took all the credit for our successes, no matter how frequent they became."

"But she got better, right?"

"Sure she did. But it took some… serious trauma. Y'see, after she had completed her tour of Unova, she decided to go on tour in the Indigo Plateau regions, starting with Kanto. We hitchhiked our way through Neverem and stayed in a little B&B just a few miles past the Kantonian border. This was more recent than you'd think; February two years ago, we went to that B&B."

"February, two years ago? But that's when..."

"Yeah, everybody knows what happened. We were woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of an explosion. We looked out the window and we could see this… great big cloud of ash coming from Mount Silver. It was… indescribably huge, and it only got bigger and bigger and transformed into this ghastly blanket that just kept on expanding as it covered the ground beneath. We could smell the shit through our window, and eventually we took cover under the bed, fearing for our lives. Thankfully, it didn't get that far. But we were damn close. The stench was overwhelming when we walked out the door, and it was only a six-mile drive away from where the ash had stopped. Can you believe it? Six fucking miles!"

"So you all survived?"

"We did to start with. But then Sara made the mistake of taking a closer look at the carnage a few hours later. It was fine at first; the ash was still warm, but it wasn't burning hot like it would have been when the volcano first erupted. She wasn't stupid enough to actually walk in the stuff, but we all began to feel really nauseous from the gas, so we went back. And that's… when it arrived."

"You mean… the virus?"

"About a day after that, yeah. We were still in the B&B, as the surrounding areas were under quarantine as the first Pokémon with the Pokérus-B virus were reported twelve hours before. Peabrain was the first to turn. He just… sat there with foam running from his beak, and when Camp Dracula tried to get a response out of him, he turned around and bit him in the neck. Then he started screaming 'ARCEUS HELP! HELP ME!' and attacked the rest of us. I ran out of the room just in time, but the rest of them were not so lucky. The Hazmat teams arrived some time later to 'escort' them out. We were with them as they slowly succumbed to the virus and died in containment. First Peabrain, then Dracula, Serps, Lightning… Bonaparte was the last to go in the early hours of the morning… I was lucky to survive that. It changed both of us. Sara learned to truly appreciate the companionship we offered her, and to value us just as she'd value a human being. Since then, she's sworn to never let that happen again. To any of us. If any of us get killed… may Arceus have mercy on the killer's soul, because Sara won't."

At that point, we turned our heads back out towards the camp, almost in unison, as we heard a familiar voice calling to us. The voice of The Dust.

"Hey! Are yous done over theres yet? We're just about to play some Scrabbles!"

"Hang on a second, I'll be right there!" Rings replied. Then we both turned back to our previous positions. "So yes. That's what happened. Now you know, and we will never talk about this again. Capische?"

"Clear as crystal." I replied with a surprising degree of honesty. You see now why I didn't really want to screw up my relationship with this team. I know the ferocity of one who has suffered loss, to be expected from a Breloom of my… talents. Revenge is the most powerful of the primal urges.

* * *

We packed up from that camp at about eight o'clock the next morning. The second half of the journey to Snowpoint City was disappointingly similar to the first, with yet more Hikers with Geodudes. My skills are just wasted on them. With the tactical aptitude, or lack thereof, they displayed, I can see Sturgeon's law in effect. The Muscle's Golem was a one-in-a-million case, without a doubt. We did encounter a few other types of trainer once we got down from Mount Coronet, though. On pedestrian route 216, we encountered a group of so-called 'Ace Trainers', the supposed elite of the Sinnoese Pokémon League who had the oversized egos to go to 'clubs' where they discuss how 'cool' they are, with their spiky hair and ridiculous clothes. Arrogance is one of the worst sins of all. With it, your guard is gone, your capacity for learning is gone, and your ability to cooperate is gone. So what is left for the arrogant one? Nothing. Even after I beat their leader's team to a metaphorical pulp with Maggie, they still thought they were somehow superior to us based on… what, exactly? I do not know. I get the feeling that if I had just satisfied my urge to kill and snapped their necks right there, they wouldn't have cared much. Especially Rings. We also encountered a strange boy who was dressed like a Ninja, who popped out of the snow when we approached. He can't have been older than ten years old, and he only had one Pokémon, a Skorupi. It was surprisingly resilient… it took both me and The Dust to coordinate a good attack strategy against it, as it was simply too fast for Chunk; ah yes, I forgot to mention, he's also slow. Both mentally and physically. I noticed that me and The Dust seem to think alike when fighting together... literally, right after I Wrapped the Skorupi's claws together, he catapulted his own foot to his face with his head-tails, the exact same thing I did with the Bisharp back at White Forest; he didn't even need my cue. After we had beaten it, the boy just thanked us for the 'bout' and vanished into the blizzard. I could see him having a career as an Agency handler, if the Agency hadn't been compromised.

Another thing to know about Sara's work ethics; she has this thing for surprises. Yet another completely pointless concept, except this one is even more blatant about its 'withholding information for no discernible reason' rule than personal secrets. So I wasn't aware of the real reason she was heading to Snowpoint City until just after that battle with the Ninja Boy, when The Dust, in another uncanny demonstration of being on the same plane of thought as me, finally cracked under the pressure of keeping a pointless secret and told me she was heading there to meet Candice, the retired Gym Leader for the town who was going to speak at a protest against the local government's plan to shut down the Gym, a move 'inspired' by what many Sinnoese people consider Jon Timmer's aggressive Anti-Leagueism. I was just glad _somebody_ was trying to make a difference around there. Of course, it was obvious to all of us that Sara wanted to battle Candice, her being a role model to Ice-Type specialists everywhere and all. It's disturbingly convenient how her name has 'ice' in it, much like how that fellow Wattson had 'watt' in his name, and how Drake was called Drake. Maybe Gym Leaders were selected based on how punny their names are.

There was one last obstacle standing in our way before we could enter Snowpoint, however. From what I understood from Maggie's supplementary history lesson, she hadn't been to Snowpoint since her first tour of Unova, at eleven years old. That was before Mount Silver erupted. So now, in this second visit, she had a new place to visit: the Lake Acuity Refugee Camp. The third-largest Refugee Camp in Sinnoh, it had completely engulfed the Acuity Lakefront, which before the eruption was mostly just another patch of trees with some paths thrown in. Sinnoh really likes those, it seems.

So, on the final stretch of Pedestrian Route 217, Sara had let us out of our Poké Balls to get some fresh air on the approach to the Camp. The sun was beginning to set and turn the sky the closest think you could get to a 'warm blue'. The scent of prefab plastic, soup and misery filled our nostrils as we trudged along the snow-lined mud track like Tommies behind Sara, in her usual attire of a Grey parka with yellow trim, grey boots, brown trousers, grey scarf and grey woollen hat with yellow Poké Ball symbol on it (no wonder the Pineco described her as 'grey yellow black', the black being her sweater under the parka; 'twas her theme colours), the great mass of prefabricated houses and dull multicoloured trailers approaching on the horizon. After what felt like an eternity, we finally reached the entrance, indicated by a simple green boom barrier with some sturdy steel fences on each side of it, which I assume surround the entire camp, though I never had the opportunity to check. Standing by the barrier was a soldier in snow-camouflaged fatigues and a simple cap, holding a SAR in his reddened hands (that's a Silph Assault Rifle; Silph Armoury was the only branch of the Silph Conglomerate that didn't go under after their little pollution exposé and subsequent bankruptcy just after Timmer started his first term. Humans will always need weapons, economy and safety be damned.) His face was also reddened, with most of the red concentrated on his nose and ears. To the left of us was another soldier with the same uniform but more hair and shadow on his head on an olive-green foldout chair, drinking coffee out of a paper cup and watching television on one of those tiny portable TVs mounted on top of a plastic crate, also olive green. I can only assume the military never intended to take crates with them on stealth missions in wintry environments.

"Ma'am, I'm gonna have to ask you to stop." Said the soldier by the barrier in a deep, flat and somewhat bored manner. I would make a joke about soldiers acting like robots here, but really, most humans I've met talk like that in the cold too; and if you replace 'bored' with 'unnerving to a non-Killer', most humans I've met full stop.

"Why? What did I do? I just wanna get in the camp! I don't-" Replied Sara, panicking, and soon cut off.

"Don't be alarmed, I just need to scan your 'mons for PR-B."

"What the hell, they didn't do this at the Jubilife camp! Do they look infected to you?!"

"No, but we gotta be sure since the government issued a potential outbreak warning. No idea why."

"Well, then they're being paranoid! My Pokémon are too… smart… to get themselves infected like idiots. Plus, I wouldn't let them get infected. No way, sir!"

"Don't complain to me, ma'am, I'm just following orders. All your 'mons need to do is stay still while I scan them. If I don't pick up any traces, you'll be free to enter."

With that, he put his rifle down on the ground and, off his lower back, he pulled out a scanning device which looked kind of like a red, grimy glowstick if it had a slab of metal with some lights on it stuck to the top.

"This'll only take a minute…"

For some reason, rather than starting with Rings at the front of the queue to be scanned, he walked over to Chunk at the back and started with him, waving the red light around his body. As he was busy with that, I looked over at the other soldier fiddling about with the small grey box that was his TV. It looked extremely primitive, without a doubt, but a general survivalist, 'accept-what-you-have' attitude amongst the residents of these camps have attained a degree of popularity, supposedly because it's a cheap yet wholesome way to live, resulting in a lot of primitive tech still being in wide use in the less glamorous areas of the country; a welcome break from typical human over-inflated demands. Anyway, I couldn't see the TV screen itself thanks to its positioning on the crate, but I could definitely hear it, for Private Oblivious felt the need to turn the volume up really loud. I got the feeling he didn't have an indoor voice, either. After a while, the screen flickered and lit up, and the stubble-faced soldier leaned back. As the scanner finished Chunk and moved on to Maggie directly behind me, the TV 'spoke' up, and I instantly recognised the voice of that famed CBN News anchor, Ronald Burns-Grundy.

"…Australian police managed to arrest the Japanese amateur comic artist and seize the tainted Aspear Berries before they reached the general public, preventing, in the words of the trade secretary, an awkward misunderstanding. In other, more local news, a robbery was committed at the Juniper Memorial Research Institute of LaRousse City. The robbery took place at roughly seven AM this morning, when a crew of three men burst through the front door, and incapacitated two security guards and the receptionist before proceeding to meet up with accomplices who were either employed at the institute for the robbery or were bribed into assisting their mission. They only remained in the facility for an estimated eleven more minutes before fleeing the scene of the crime, having stolen a concentrated sample of the Pokérus-B virus used in experiments attempting to create a vaccine for that same virus, and nothing else. Police are baffled at the possible motives behind the robbery, but the government, in case of a PR-B outbreak, have issued a Class 1 outbreak warning, allowing random scans. Another source of confusion is how the robbers were able to disable most, if not all, of the internal security systems in order to remain almost completely undetected…"

It was at this point my train of concentration was suddenly derailed by the soldier waving the scanner around in front of me, giving me a slight tingling feeling inside, no doubt due to countless cells getting a rude wake-up call by the radiation that no doubt exists in those scanners. Being patient and methodical, I quickly got that train of concentration back on track.

"…So far, none of the robbers have been identified, and identification efforts have been hampered by the lack of CCTV footage, with most records based on eyewitness accounts. However, one of the robbers, whose participation was confirmed by the little CCTV footage that exists, was seen wearing a full-body NBC suit, hooded poncho and gas mask, and is believed to be the mastermind behind the robbery. The closest anyone has gotten to identifying him is the almost identical description of a similarly masked man who carried out a coup in the Balkans four years ago, and both individuals were seen using psychic powers in their endeavours, but the investigators have made it clear that we should not jump to conclusions regarding his unclear identity…"

Hmm… gas mask, psychic powers, coup in the Balkans… it all reeked of The Hollow Man, another Agency Handler I knew. Well, I'd call him a 'Handler', but he much preferred to do things himself, just keeping his Pokémon around for backup. They codenamed him the Hollow Man because some people thought he wasn't even a physical being; just a ghost in a suit, which is, of course, complete nonsense, but it should be established that even the Muscle found him unnerving, given his willingness to get his own hands dirty and his ability to kill people just by thinking about them really, _really_ hard. So it's no wonder some of his victims thought of him as the closest thing to an eldritch abomination a person can get. I had no idea, and still have no idea, why he'd be stealing PR-B from a laboratory, but I suppose it's none of my business.

Suddenly, my concentration was derailed again when Private Oblivious apparently caught on to the unnecessary volume of his TV and turned it down beyond my hearing capabilities, and then my concentration on it crashed for good when I realized that The Dust's and Rings' scans were complete, and the soldier said, with the same bored tone:

"…Nope, there's no signs of infection here, ma'am. You're clear to enter."

Sara remained silent, no doubt silently cursing the soldier and his superiors for daring to think she would allow _her_ team get infected with PR-B. The soldier picked his now-frosted rifle back up and pressed a button behind the green metal post, opening the boom barrier, and before I knew we it were we back to trudging through snow-capped mud and grass, except this time we were flanked by walls of plastic, wood and light metal, of colours ranging from dull grey to dull blue to dull green. Generally very dull. A good move on the part of whoever designed all these prefabs and trailers; bright, vibrant colours breed hope, and as we all know, hope breeds disappointment. So one simply places the survivors of a vast catastrophe in the most dull environment possible, and their disappointment levels will be kept down long enough for them to properly buckle down, work together and make a real difference. I could feel that there… there weren't actually as many people as there would be normally wandering the prefabricated labyrinth, because, at this time of evening, they'd all be eating as we were about to do shortly, but the effects of their catastrophe-defying resolve were evident. I didn't see a single weeping person, I didn't hear any news of suicides, and the people I did see seemed indifferent about their situation at worst. Gabby Gawson did say in that radio interview that many residents of the camps had been 'waiting long enough' to return to their old homes in the now-inhospitable Indigo Plateau Regions, and you know why? Because it's a proven fact that making the government look bad, paradoxically, gets more people to trust them. If you gush about how awesome the current government is, it'll just come across as blatant propaganda to the average Joe. These refugees seem to have gotten along just fine to me. But then again, I'm not a particularly good judge, since my speciality is in causing death to improve life, as opposed to just improving life.

After a while, we wandered past the frozen slab of ice that is Lake Acuity in the winter, surrounded by the structures of the refugee camp. The only notable feature of such an otherwise-boring lake was the old shrine to Uxie and Knowledge on the island in the centre, originally located inside the Acuity Cavern before it caved in, courtesy of the Sapient Liberation Front. It's rather ironic how the shrine is supposedly dedicated to both the value of knowledgeable, rational thinking and a Legendary Pokémon that has never been discovered by anyone in the history of mankind and is said to be a mere myth by the mainstream scientific community. Anyhow, it was here that Sara spoke up again, entertaining (or in my case, baffling) us with her love of surprises with no prior indication whatsoever, no matter how trivial or miniscule.

"Alright, listen up, maggots! It is with great regret I inform you that we'll have to split for a bit. I have an old pen pal in this camp that we can stay with for tonight, but the problem is, he lives here with his grandma, and she's one of those fundamentalist types that don't believe in letting Pokémon roam the house unattended. But I like it when you're unattended because it gives you freedom to breathe and do what you like, and that's bloody brilliant! And you won't get into trouble with the locals, what with Rings' Trainer Pokémon ID mark and all. So here's the deal: I'll go to my friend's place for dinner, you go and get your own food from the nearest mess hall which I'm sure will make a refreshing break from Neverem Mash, and I'll come and get you in… two hours!"

* * *

Certainly, the food we received was indeed a refreshing break from Neverem Mash. Just not the right kind of refreshing.

The Mess Halls are the cafés and restaurants of the Refugee camps, so-named because, as demonstrated by the presence of soldiers at the entrance, the camps are under martial law. Thankfully the army is rather laissez-faire about governing camps full of survivors of a volcanic eruption, but that doesn't stop their chefs from cooking at the Mess Halls, and when I say 'cooking', I mean, 'recycling leftover MREs'.

There we all were, sitting at a wooden park bench for one of the few Pokémon-only Mess Halls we could find (we had to take what we could get, considering how the refugee camps are practically the only places to find such facilities in Sinnoh thanks to Kanto and Johto's more libertarian stance on Pokémon independence), waiting for our food to arrive. There was no menu, we just had to wait and see what the cook, a Machoke fellow, could whip up for us. I could only hope that he had a basic grasp on Pokémon diet provisions, especially since I was a herbivore; ironic, given my occupation. And this wasn't one of the many ironic things I was doing as part of this particular mission, this was routinely ironic on a day-to-day basis.

The five of us sat there, in the wooden-floored, white-walled, bland-as-you-can-get Mess Hall, lit up orange from the setting sun outside, completely silent as we anticipated what juicy morsels the fine food specialists of the army could cook up for us. After a while, the Machoke I mentioned, the beefy Pokémon dulled up in snow fatigue trousers, boots and a white sweater (Machoke are unique in that they often wore clothes, primarily because of their very humanlike biology compared to most. Even so, it's very jarring to many a naïve trainer who only ever sees them in wrestling shorts) appeared to us. Without any kind of warning whatsoever, he plonked down some plates on the bench in front of us, which caused all of us to jump. I'll admit it, I jumped as well. I suppose this extended period of not doing any real Agency business had softened me up a little _somewhere_ inside. On our plates were various assortments of what can best be described as jumbled masses of vaguely edible-looking stuff. On the plus side, I had some sort of _vegetable_ lasagne, so I could stop worrying about giving myself protein poisoning. Chunk had some sort of meat mince stuff sandwiched between a cracked bun, Maggie had yellowish chickenish bits with some ricish bits, Rings was sitting before a plate of reddish sticks which may or may not have been ribs, and The Dust… I don't even know. They looked kind of like a cross between beetroot and meatballs with a dusty covering, no pun intended, but I couldn't be sure. I'll tell you something; upon the sight of this, Shrom's ideas of a 'Pokémon Cuisine' didn't seem so bad anymore.

"NOW, I know what you're thinkin', BUT. Remember this… this was an experiment in spices!" said the Machoke in such a hammy and over-the-top manner; so much so, he came across as an old Hollywood blockbuster villain. He'd still beat the dreck that that pathetic excuse for a film industry component 'PokéStar Studios' passes through cinemas any day of the week.

"An… experiment? Reassuring. Tell me, are these recycled Meals Rejected by Everyone or are they… not?" Responded Maggie. She always was something of a mind-speaker of the slightly rude variety.

"YES, I KNOW, it sounds bad, but I… ResPECT the sensiBILITIES of CUISINE. THEREFORE, experimentation is EVERYTHING! It's like SCIENCE, except with food."

"Oy vey. I know how well 'science' ends half the time. So, what have you put in these… things? 'Spices', hmm?"

"Not just ANY spices, INDIAN spices! From India!"

"You don't say? I thought you meant Indian spices from Mongolia."

Chunk chuckled at that sarcastic comment in that ear-grating tone of his. I'm surprised he wasn't defending the next stage of his evolutionary line. Who knows, maybe he was actually offended by his over-the-top manner of speaking. That'd be mighty baffling, but whatever.

"Look, LADY, I can tell you're RELUCtant to try out my admittedly NOVICE attempts at cooking, and I can COMPLETELY sympathize with you there. Just TRY it, you might… heavens forbid… LIKE IT. If NOT, there are PLENTY of starving INSIDERS in this camp who'd take it over GODDAMN NOTHIN' any day!"

"Sir." I said, feeling grateful for something. Grace makes sense. Grace is confirmation to another that you are satisfied with a service they have provided.

"…YES?"

"I appreciate the consideration you took for my vegetarianism."

"THANK you, mushroom-guy! Glad to see SOMEbody appreciates my WORK! Now, if you'll all EXCUSE me, I need to feed the AFOREMENTIONED residents. BONE APPETITE, or whatever it is those FRENCH masters of COOKING say."

With that, Mr. Beefy Ham In Wool thundered back into the nearby kitchen, and we set about eating… if you consider poking at our dishes and occasionally scooping in a mouthful before chewing very slowly 'eating'. Except Chunk, of course, who just started shovelling his food in right away with that 'OM NOM NOM' noise. Gah. It's a shame I was never able to ask how old he is, because he looked too old to act the way he did. Maggie decided to voice her mind in response to this.

"Y'know, Chunk, that isn't entirely necessary. We're all civilized people here, aren't we? Well, civilized Pokémon. Doesn't make a difference to me."

"Look at you lot! You're just… pokin' at your food! I'm at least enjoying it!"

"Yes, enjoying it like a complete nut! You wolf that down any harder, you'll fucking kill yourself, you greedy bastard!"

"Hey, relax, Mag. He's just appreciatins the works of a cook from the sames evolutionary lines as his. Proof that not all Machops descendants are meat-brained knuckleheads who punch and do little else!" Dust cut in, jokingly.

"Hey, shut up!" Chunk responded, very non-jokingly.

"At least a Machoke's brain would be edible." Maggie threw in, again jokingly.

"Agh, could this shit be any more rocky? I swear, these are painted rocks!" Rings suddenly remarked as he gave up his fifth-or-sixth attempt at chewing at his reddish sticks. Even with his giant buck teeth, he was clearly having difficulty.

"Hahaha, it sures as hells would! Machoke brains, yum yum!" The Dust joked once again, unaware that he may very well have incited a one-Machop riot. Of course, Rings could sense it approaching on the horizon, and shut it down once he'd gotten his buck teeth back in place.

"Gah… guys, guys, that's disgusting. Machoke brain is probably extremely poisonous, and the last thing we need is a repeat of that silly incident we heard on the news a few weeks back. Remember? A boy found a Lucario, fed it chocolate as a show of misguided friendship, it accepted, and died of food poisoning three days later."

"Uh… I never heards of such a news stories."

"Exactly. That's because it wasn't highly publicized. They assumed people knew not to eat poisonous food already."

Silence engulfed the table for a good two minutes, giving Chunk the distraction he needed to continue wolfing down his strange mince-in-a-bun concoction. Then something hit my mind. I realized that I may have become an idiot from my infiltration mission, as I had been with Sara's team for nearly two days now, and I never bothered to ask any questions about The Botanist… or 'Sara's father', as I'd have to refer to him. Amazing what transformative effects on the mind being in a decidedly alien environment brings to you. But I quickly rectified that, gave my focus a quick adrenaline boost and directed my questions at The Dust. Why? Because, as I've mentioned, we think very much alike, and I had already exhausted my share of questions for Rings, the other reliable source of information. The confrontational and sceptical Maggie would have probably gave me more questions than I could anticipate, and Chunk… well, he's just unreliable.

"Dust."

"Yeah, Stools?"

"A couple days ago, I remember Rings saying something suggesting a rift between Sara's mother and father. What's wrong with her father?"

"You mean Massoud? I gots no definitive answers, but I heards that he's been involveds in some shady business in the past. Black markets, money launderings, street racings, contract killings… who knows? I also hear that after he divorced Sara's mum, he became summat of a reclusive nomad, never settlins in the same places for more than two months straights, that is, before he settled in that giant mock Japanese castle-mansion thingummybobs."

"Reclusive? Why?"

"No shortage o' theories and stories there. I read about him on Wikipedia sometimes, and apparently some o' the more religious types says he isn't even there, as he's been damned by Arceus for some past transgressions, which is o' course bullshit, but the other sides of the crazy religions/crazy sciences rift don't fare betters, with some sayins he's the victims of an alien abductions."

"Any more plausible theories?"

"Well, some says he's some kinda conspiracy theorist himself, and he's hiding in there to stop the evil government from shooting mind controls rays at his head and erase his secret knowledge of the ancient conspiracies to… turn us all into Jynxs or some shits. Pfft. Me, I just thinks he's like most people with way too much cash. Paranoid, paranoid, paranoids."

"That certainly seems to be the case."

"Well, y'know, Occam's razor and all that."

With that information absorbed and filed away into the Killer's archives, ready to be brought out in a flash, the rest of that cringe worthy dinnertime passed without incident, or indeed, noise, as we continued to awkwardly poke and nibble at our 'dishes'. It took so long for us to finish eating that, by the time we had, the sky outside had darkened considerably and the lights had all turned on. Technically speaking, we hadn't 'finished' our food at all, we had just decided that we weren't going to bother eating anymore because it was more trouble than it's worth. The four of us… and Chunk, all looked extremely queasy to say the least, but I'm sure I took the worst of it. I suppose it's a good job I had already puked two nights before, so my insides could handle whatever dodgy stuff the Machoke put in my food, otherwise my stomach would be overloaded. Not a good thing to think about.

Even so, I was the only one that insisted to go outside and get some fresh air, and that wasn't exclusively due to the bad food. I needed to get my thoughts all in place. Since the visit to my old Handler would be less than twenty-four hours away, I needed to start thinking about how I was going to carry out that part of the plan. Obviously, being the new Pokémon on the team, Sara would get me in the house, but then what? The Botanist is no slacker. He probably keeps a gun somewhere, and that bodyguard of his that Zangerson mentioned rules out poison. It was something of a complicated conundrum.

While I was arranging all the pieces of the plan together, creating bits and destroying others, I was, in the real world, walking along the crisp snow directly outside the Mess Hall, all by myself, the cold helping me focus and not get too complacent with the comforts of nature. Grass-Types like myself are notorious for that sort of thing. The Agency would almost never send us on missions that involve going into lush, green, humid jungles for that reason. Too much nature.

"Oi, you!"

I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard that voice. It was gravely, even more so than The Dust's, and displayed a strong archetypal East London accent. Somehow, it sounded familiar… but that wasn't important at the time. What was important was where it came from, and why it would be calling to me. To indicate to whomever the voice belonged to that I heard them well, I looked around, feigning naïve curiosity and shock.

"Yeah, you! Cam ova 'ere. In de alleyway."

I looked to my left, and sure enough, there was an alleyway of sorts between the Mess Hall and the grimy prefab next to it, filled with more olive green crates covered with thick frostings of snow, a row of them blocking my view of the unknown caller. I grasped the crate in the middle and hauled myself up onto the crate before swinging myself over the top, landing in the thick, pristine snow on the other side. I turned around towards the other side of the alley and saw a short, humanoid, crest-headed figure obscured by shadows. It was at first, anyway. But then I saw a tiny orange glow appear at its head, and I could smell thick, heavy smoke. The figure was smoking, no doubt. That would explain the gravelly voice.

"What do you want?"

"…Parasite? Is 'at you?"

"Who wants to know?"

"You stupid bastahd, don' cha recognise me? I was 'at Kyogah's Kitchen!"

As he said this, the orange light lowered from his mouth and he moved forward out of the shadows, revealing his full form. He was a Weavile, but he had some distinguishing features; namely, the green eyes and gem, the latter of which had a crack in it, a battle scar of some old bar brawl or somesuch, and his face was covered in distinctive blocky and line-like tattoos of the same style they give all prisoners at Kyogre's Kitchen to identify them as dangerous lawbreakers. He was holding a small cigar, the source of the orange glow and the smoke. I surveyed his form, and my memory came back to me. I had met him before, yes. About five years ago, I was sent on a special mission, with a competitive twist; the Agency's best Handlers selected their best Pokémon to infiltrate Kyogre's Kitchen, the supposedly unbreakable maximum security prison, and once inside, break into the human wing and eliminate the former leader of that defunct gang of inept psychopaths, Team Plasma. Once he was dead, we had to take his bionic eye as proof of his demise, with the understanding that only one of us could claim the bounty on his head. I met up with this Weavile while I was stuck in there, because I had heard he was a former confidence trickster and a sort of information broker among the inmates of the Chocolate Cupboard; that's the least secure of the prison blocks. Apparently, his full name was Croker Weavile, the Croker part coming from the protagonist of _The Italian Job_, but everyone always referred to him either as C. Weavile, or this:

"Cee-Wee. I remember."

"Ahahaha, I neva' fough' I'd see your boat arand 'ere. Wot's been goin' on, eh? You still murderin' people for dat… agency, wos i'?"

"You know I can't tell you that."

"Well, I tell ya wot, mate, I been through some shit since I got released on parole. Ferst they sen' me to sam bladdy men'al asylum, an' then when I attack the bladdy bore of a psychiatrist for askin' me intrusive questions, they put me on bladdy communi'y service! Well, it wosn't dat bad. It did get me away from Joh'o so I didn't get mah arse fried by dat fackin' volcanoh, and nah ah've been makin some serious bees workin' for McBrady's gang."

"…McBrady's gang? You mean the Sagittarius Mob? They're here?"

"Yeah. The crazy Irish bastard thinks dere might be some Richard who's been assassinatin' 'is men for years arand 'ere, so he's got 'is local connections on the case."

"Who?"

"Hugh Anderson. You must 'av 'eard of 'at wankah on the news. Serial car thief, bank robber, bladdy yank from Texas or whatever the 'ell it's called. McBrady's wheeled 'im in to search northern Sinnoh for dis assassin bloke, whoever he is. Why do you wanna kno', anyway? Dis assassin a friend o' yours?"

I know that Cee-Wee is no stranger to the emotions of a fugitive and a criminal. Deduction of people's thoughts is mandatory for any good confidence trickster. I could tell from the look on his face, with his squinting eyes and his subtle frown that he was starting to catch on to who I was. But I didn't wish to attract any attention, so I had to remain calm and casual with my response.

"No. I just like to know these things. I don't watch the news much."

"…Right. Well, I don' bladdy care, I guess. You're still a good chinah fer 'elpin' us 'at in the chocolate cubbad, takin' 'dose 'uman 'Amptons 'dan a peg. Say, did ya manage to kill dat green-'aired robo-eyed wankah?"

"Unfortunately, no. But I did claim the bounty on his head. Our employers needed his eye as proof, and they said nothing that prohibited simply stealing it from the real killer and taking the credit."

"Oh? 'Den who did kill 'im?"

Before I had time to arrange my vocal chords and the muscles in my jaw to phrase an answer to that question, I heard a loud crunching noise coming from behind the crates, out into the main road.

"Eh? Wot da fack wos 'at?"

"…We might have company."

With that, I quickly ran over to the crates, hauled myself back up top, and peered over the side. No-one. But that wasn't all there was to it, there's always other details to observe and take into account. And here, there was something even worse than finding someone, something that confirms your suspicions while leaving the eavesdropper anonymous. Footprints in the snow. The crunching sound was probably from a rush away, as the eavesdropper had apparently been able to silently patter over here without attracting our attention. I turned around. Cee-Wee was standing behind, with that same look of suspicion on his face.

"...Parasite?"

"Somebody was listening to us…"

"So? Fack 'em. Dat'll give 'em some perspective."

"If only it was that simple. I'm in a rather delicate situation, and we both know that's all I can say about it. I must get going. I have a place to be."

"…Suit yerself. It's bladdy tatahs 'at 'ere, so… get samplace warm."

With that unexpected reunion over with, I swung myself back over the crates and surveyed the surrounding area. No other traces of the eavesdropper. Nothing except the footprints, which lead… into the Mess Hall.

And from here on in, things get even more complicated. All thanks to the work ethics of others.


	5. Detected

This wasn't right. This wasn't right at all.

Last I remembered, I fell asleep in a small sofa bed with the rest of Sara's team. A comfortable one, with a sky-blue fleece blanket, in a tiny unfurnished spare room of a trailer. Once again, the black consumed my vision as I fell asleep, only for it to suddenly disappear half a second later. I noticed something was different about the environment surrounding me. The comfort of the mattress below me had changed into cold, sloppy mud, while the warmth of the room had been replaced with a dirty, ice-cold musk that left patches of frost on me, and the ceiling had disappeared, revealing a dull, cloudy sky.

I got up to my feet and looked around. The other Pokémon were nowhere to be seen. What was to be seen, however, was a great tangled mass of barbed wire surrounding me, forming a large circle, with a complex network of trenches in the mud beyond, boarded up with wooden planks in classic WWI style. As I surveyed this bizarre throwback to the early 20th century, the air around me changed. I could begin to smell fresh blood. With each passing second, the smell of blood got stronger and stronger, and it began to disgust me somewhat. I pieced my cautious resolve together and tried jumping over the barbed wire, only for some kind of giant wall of black Muk-like goo to jump out the ground and force me back. For what seemed like hours, I tried and tried to get over the barbed wire, but the goo always appeared to send me flying back into the circle. By this point, the air had been filled with a pale red fog, blood having contaminated it somehow. The stench had this strange property, though… as I breathed it in, I was treated to the echoed screams of dozens of people. I could recognise the voices. They were of all the people and Pokémon I had killed. The screaming continued for well over ten minutes, and I could hear murmuring and chanting among them.

"No escape… no escape… no escape… never escape… only kill… only kill… never live… never live… die a killer… live to kill thousands… but never escape…"

The voices were trying to tell me something, without a doubt, but their constant repetition had drove me round the bend by this point, as I keeled over and screamed for five minutes straight, grabbing my head, begging for the voices to stop. Finally I could take it no more and I resorted to bashing my head on the barbed wire. The voices finally fell silent, but in exchange, the forces behind this nightmarish realm felt fit to give me some painful scratches on my head.

Suddenly, the scratches started leaking. They were not leaking blood, but a thick, black, viscous substance, much like the stuff that had kept me from leaving the barbed wire circle. It was a mere drip at first, but soon enough, my otherwise minor wounds started gushing the substance out onto the ground, forming a large puddle. The substance was also extremely sticky, like tar, and I found myself unable to move away from it, powerless to do anything but watch as it gushed out. After a while, the leaking stopped very abruptly. But that was only the start of it. As I tried to arrange all the thoughts in my head into their proper places and figure out what to do next, the substance suddenly came alive and completely consumed me, blinding, deafening and gagging me. For a few moments I tried to scream again, but it was no good. All that came out were barely audible muffled noises.

As I continued to scream in the vain hope that perhaps it could break the substance encasing me open, I was suddenly teleported away into a blank black void. The substance was no longer surrounding me, but on the other hand, I was falling. Fast. The void seemed to be full of air as my plummeting experienced serious air resistance, as if I was skydiving, despite there being no sky to speak of. There was, however, a floor to speak of. A giant floor of black ice was awaiting me at the bottom of the void. I slammed my eyes shut, grabbed my legs and curled up into a cannonball, as was standard procedure for an ice-water insertion. I waited and waited… but the inevitable impact never came. I just continued falling. If I wasn't so patient, I may have thought I'd be falling forever. But instead, I heard a faint *pop* sound in the back of my ear. Was it the sound barrier breaking? Perhaps.

I opened my eyes, and the environment had changed again. This time I was facing a set of buildings in a snow-covered town square, or circle, to be precise. I had evidently stopped falling, and it seemed like I was in relatively safe territory. That is, until I tried to move. I couldn't. I looked down at my feet and noticed they were frozen onto a ring-shaped steel monument of some kind. To make matters worse, my hearing capabilities suddenly returned and I was deafened by an extremely loud helicopter-like noise. I tried to break open the ice with Brick Break, but when I did, it just grew back instantaneously. I was stuck there, alright.

I promptly looked back up, and I noticed that, while I was preoccupied with my frozen feet, the entire monument had somehow turned around by itself, leaving me face-to-face with the street leading into the circle… and several hundred identical human soldiers in snow camouflage pointing all manner of guns at me. Pistols, rifles, shotguns, RPGs, flamethrowers, sniper rifles, everything. And they weren't all there was. Behind them was a vast selection of tanks and armoured personnel carriers, all with snow camo and all pointing their respective weapons directly at my face, ready to reduce my body to a fine paste. But strangely, despite how fitting a fate this was for me, they did nothing. They all pointed their weapons at me, but not a single bullet came flying out of any barrel. That is, until he appeared.

He, in case you're wondering, was a man in a three-piece pinstripe suit, round glasses, and chinstrap beard. Sound familiar? Yes, it was Dr. Zangerson. As he suddenly emerged from the vast army that was standing before me, I thought that I may have been saved. After all, he did say that he genuinely wanted to help me out. He was a nice man. He would scare the soldiers away with his 'connections'. Heh. How childish this must sound to you. But I was in a different state of mind at that point. No idea why, for there is no way I'd ever be so naïve under normal circumstances.

Zangerson approached me, walking up a series of stone stairs to the ring monument, and as he did so, a colossal attack chopper arose from behind the soldiers, shining a blinding light in my direction. I winced and instinctively looked down, and I noticed Zangerson was casting a great shadow upon me, in the form of a huge, vicious beast of indeterminate species. I tried to wrap my head around it, but my thoughts towards it were derailed by a single statement from Zangerson:

"You like it, don't you? You don't want to stop. You can't stop. Your training has made sure of that."

He fell silent for a whole minute before speaking up again, just staring at me with a blank look on his face, while I returned the stare in anticipation.

"You remember what Scav used to say? One death always leads…"

As he said this, he suddenly pulled a rusty, archaic revolver pistol out from under his jacket, pulled the hammer back and pointed it at my face, leaving me staring down the great blackness of a gun barrel.

"…To another. Scav would be proud of you."

With that, he pulled the trigger, and with a flash and a bang, I suddenly found myself back in the trailer's spare bedroom. I was laying there, in a cold sweat, almost completely paralysed both in the psychological and physical sense. I couldn't even will myself to move anything but my eyes. Light was beaming in from outside through the blinds, leaving a series of piercing lines in my vision, but as blinding as they were, I couldn't even get my eyes to shut. As I came to my senses, I noticed there was no-one in the room but me, and the blue blanket had been thrown over my body and was left in a layered bundle. Obviously the others were in a rush for breakfast, but I could not worry about them when I was still busy recovering from my otherworldly experience.

Suddenly, the door on the opposite side of the room swung open. It was Chunk. He ran over to me, an expression of worry on his face.

"Hey, Mr. Stool! What happened to ya? You look all… messed up."

I couldn't bring myself to respond at first. The muscles in my mouth had to take the time to restart their engines first.

"Mr. Stool, what's wrong?! Please, say something!"

"…Relax… I… just had a bad dream… wait for a bit, I'll get up… eventually…" I said slowly, while tiredly fidgeting about under the bundles of blanket above me.

"Oh, okay. Hey, guess what we're having for breakfast!"

"Neverem Mash?"

"Wrong! It's- wait… yeah, that's right. How'd you know?"

"…Ugh… don't be an idiot, it's obvious…"

* * *

Now, I may have come to expect unlikely coincidences, given the amount of in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time blackmailers and paparazzos I've been sent to kill, but even so, this was just unreal.

That circle that appeared in my dream? It existed, alright. It was the historic Town Circle of Old Snowpoint, and that ring monument was the Orange War Memorial, dedicated to the Oranges of Northern Sinnoh who fell in the war.

At that point in time, about Two O'clock in the afternoon, seven hours after my awakening, I was standing before the great steel monument, which, from this point of view at least, took the form of a stone pedestal, with another stone pedestal on top, and with a steel-forged Arceus Ring, the symbol of the short-lived Originist Republic of Sinnoh and the Originist religion in general, atop that. The architecture surrounding the circle was typical of Snowpoint's Old Quarter, a Colonial imitation of Shakespearean London, and the lights in front of the archaic short lantern-on-a-post variety. Obviously, this being 'Snow'-point City in the middle of January, the whole area was covered in thick snow. Not even the morning grit trucks could clear the snow from the roads, so there were lots of tire tracks. Behind me were the rest of Sara's team, as we were waiting to be let into the local Ice Gym on the upper-right section of the town circle. From the outside, the Ice Gym stuck out like a sore thumb, as it had a giant red-and-white neon Poké Ball emblem mounted up on top, a compromising adaptation of the building to its new duty since the original Ice Gym in the centre of town was burnt to the ground in an unfortunate accident mere months earlier. This being a fully-fledged Sinnoese town and not a Refugee Camp filled with those pesky libertarian Indigos, as a local would say, we were not permitted to go wandering around without Sara nearby, otherwise we'd get stopped by a police officer and thrown into the nearest Pound.

While we were waiting for Sara to secure our entry into the gym by registering, as one had to do since the League cracked down on rule-breakers to improve its image in the face of Timmer's Anti-Leagueism, we just sort of stood there impatiently, too busy shivering in the cold weather, even colder than usual, surprisingly, to talk to each other. As you'd expect, the memorial piqued my interest, having appeared in a dream despite me never having seen it before. Dreams, or nightmares to be precise, were something of a recurrence among members of the Agency, both Pokémon Killers and Human Handlers. A few of us were convinced that we were conditioned to suffer such nightmares in order to strengthen our resolve, and heighten our threshold for both mental and physical pain. People and objects in these nightmares were always supposed to hold significance, be it great or trivial.

I walked up the stone steps at the pace of an overweight Donphan, and I surveyed the faux-golden plaque on the upper stone pedestal. It read:

THIS MEMORIAL, COMMISSIONED BY THE SINNOESE STATE AUTHORITY, IS DEDICATED TO THE BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES TO DEFEND THE HOLY LAND FROM THE REPUBLIC AGGRESSORS, AND THOSE GALLANT CIVILIAN SUPPORTERS WHO FELL VICTIM TO THEIR INDISCRIMINATE FIRE.

Ignoring the obvious controversy caused by the rather inaccurate wording of the plaque, below that were about a hundred names or so, all of them top brass; generals, admirals, air marshals and the like. But it was obvious, even from a distance, that both of the stone pedestals were plastered with thousands more names, encompassing every rank of the military and the civilians who had provided medical assistance during the Blues' OPERATION: SPINAL TAP at the war's conclusion, and all these names had their translations in Sinnoese below, with the Unown Alphabet. This part at least made some sense within my dream. I was stuck atop a representation of the death of thousands of people, my dark deeds exposed for all to see… in this case, the army that had their guns pointed at me. When you stand on the death of many… you're very likely to be stuck there. Forever.

What worried me especially about my nightmare was Zangerson's part in it. I already knew that he knew more than he was telling me. His 'friends', for instance. Who could they be? And what information that The Botanist possessed were they so concerned with? The information was clearly forbidden, hence me getting sent off to kill him in the first place, but what would happen if I knew this information, too? Would Zangerson send someone to kill me? Well, if he did, I can only assume he'd pick something that wasn't a Bisharp, seeing how well that would have turned out. By this point, though, I could be certain that The Botanist would not be the last person I kill, as much as I had hoped that he would. Just as Zangerson echoed Scav in the nightmare, one death always leads to another. Scav was an old Mandibuzz and one of the longest-serving Pokémon Killers during the Agency's lifetime. I remember I was inducted into the Agency during the second year following my evolution, when Scav took notice of my talents while I was an enforcer for Doon's Gang, an era that has since been lost from my mental archives, overtaken by page upon page of silent death. You could consider her my mentor. The first thing she said upon meeting me? "You may have killed before, but remember this: once you start killing in this business, you can't stop. Ever. You can try, but you'll fail." Now I see it had a kernel of truth, even if she was the embodiment of pure cynicism.

As I was surveying the sheer scale of the death the memorial represented, I noticed The Dust had joined me up at the top of the steps, on the bottom pedestal.

"Stunnings, ain't it?"

"What is?"

"How much destructions living beings can cause. I've seen a lot of it in my times. Even after the war, peoples are still killing peoples, and let me tell yous, any reasons they give for it is a covers for the true reason: because they enjoys it. They relish it, they do. In facts, I've seen some of it in you…"

"Have you now?"

"Yeah. I know one who enjoys a good fights when I see one, and not the non-lethal Pokémons-battling kinda fight, either. The fights with risks, the fights with deaths, those kinds. I can sees the fire in your eyes. You strikes me as the person who would end up listed on one o' these memorials, much like a younger me. I says you be careful. You have promise, and it'd be a right shitheap to lose it so soons."

And with that, he walked back down the steps to join the rest of the team. At this point, I could only hope that her obvious planned battle with Candice would be delayed so we could get to The Botanist faster. Another sign of ethical deterioration this mission has caused. My cover was not holding up as well as I'd hoped. It's times like this I wish I had Mole, The Sting In The Tail's Ditto, helping me out. His cover was always rock-solid; especially when he impersonated a Rock-type.

* * *

"What?! What do you mean she's not here?!"

Lady Luck looked favourably upon me today. By now, we were inside the main arena of the makeshift replacement gym, which, if it was a living being, could not say the same thing since everything was apparently conspiring to stop Gyms from existing in Snowpoint. First the fire, now Timmer.

The main arena of the Ice Gym could be best described as a small quarry made of artificial ice, with a large ice rink on the bottom, two smaller circular ones on the layer above, and a fourth, medium-sized one at the top, opposite the entrance, where we were standing, all of which had the generic Poké Ball emblem carved into them. If one was to look closely at the ice stalactite-laden ceiling, one could see the steel framework that held it all in place. I had to give them credit. This replacement Gym had only been up for a month and they had already gotten the theme down.

At the main arena on the bottom level, two trainers, one male and one female, were practicing. They looked a lot like the Ace Trainers we encountered the day before, except with red clothing. The female one was commanding a Snover to beat the snot out of the male's Sealeo. Pokémon Battling had indeed become a much more brutal affair since the League relaxed the rules on Battle procedure, again to make itself look better in the face of Timmer, and ironically ended up making itself look worse. It used to be strict, regimental, turn-taking, one-attack-at-a-time, but now it was essentially disorganized brawling. Opinions on this were divided, but it certainly made it a lot more enjoyable for me than it would have been. Other than them, me, Sara, the rest of her team and the middle-aged, blue-coated lady she was talking to were the only ones present in the whole room.

But I digress. Who was this blue-coated lady? She was an associate of Candice's, possibly her lawyer or one of her PR people, who was essentially stationed at the uppermost Ice arena to tell people Candice wouldn't be accepting battles. Naturally, Sara was more than a little annoyed at this. The lady did try her best to remain professional, to her credit. Unfortunately for all of us, however, her tone came across as a little bit condescending.

"Like I said, she's delayed her visit to the Gym on account of, and I quote, crowds of people pestering her for battles. I quote again, if it weren't for battle-obsessed nuisances, I, as in Candice, would not even need to protect the Gym from closure."

"What's up with that?!" Sara responded, still annoyed. "She's the former Gym Leader, it's her duty to battle!"

"_Was_ her duty, but then she retired so she could go to university in Vashik, and now she holds a lucrative executive position in CasteliaCone Confectionery, Inc. She has no such 'duty' anymore. She wishes to stop the Gym's closure, nothing more, nothing less."

"Oh, so because she's now a fancy-pants businesswoman, it means she can just forget her roots?"

"Her 'roots' are irrelevant to her practices. She has no obligation to visit this Gym. It was a conscious choice, so she can make arrangements at her convenience."

The look on Sara's face was an indicator of the fire and fury she had built up in preparation for the battle that would never come, and by this point it had begun to cool down considerably as she resigned herself to another day of peace, the great stories she would tell to her father about how she beat the legendary Candice now completely non-existent.

"Ugh… fine, you've made your point. C'mon, guys, let's go…"

But then Lady Luck once reared her second, uglier face, and in a classic example of one tempting fate, her resignation to peace was violently interrupted. As we began to turn away, the room was filled with the sound of a deafening shotgun blast, which was quickly followed by everybody in the room screaming and dropping to the ground, clutching their heads. Yes, I did so too. Remember, I had to do everything in my power to maintain my cover now. Our drop to the floor was duly followed by a second shotgun blast, and I noticed the orange light of the muzzle flash coming from near the arena's entrance, pointing upwards. I crawled over to the edge of the upper arena, and I saw the source of the blast.

There was a man who looked to be in his mid-thirties with dull brown hair tied into a ponytail and a small beard surrounding his mouth. He was wearing a fur-lined leather flight jacket, business trousers, black shoes and a black ten-gallon hat, holding a double-barrelled sawed-off Lupara shotgun up high, still smoking from the two warning blasts he delivered. Behind him was a vast Seismitoad, presumably his main Pokémon accomplice, and flanking him were two more men who looked a lot more thuggish with their jeans and trainers, although one was wearing a knit hat with a dull suede jacket, and the other was wearing one of those ear-flapped hats with a green puffed-up jacket. They had their own Pokémon too, a Mightyena for the former and a Houndoom for the latter. I immediately knew who they were from prior experience. They were enforcers for the Sagittarius Mob, and the man in the middle was Hugh Anderson, serial hijacker, bank robber and 'debt collector', and kicked out of the United States' Texas Ranger Division for abusing his power. From what I understand, he emigrated here to look for more satisfying 'work' since the American public got wiser and became more averse to taking loans from shady loan sharks with hulking, shotgun-wielding cowboys behind them.

The gang of criminals steadily walked forward as Anderson flipped open his shotgun, releasing the two empty shotgun shells and yet more smoke, before pulling two fresh shells out of his pocket and inserting them into the barrels and flipping the barrels closed again. At which point, he spoke up, projecting his voice all around the room. As you'd expect, he spoke with a heavy Texas drawl.

"Awraht… calm dow-ern, all o' y'all! We ain't here to harm any o' yer… will, most o' yer, so siddow-ern, shut up, and y'all won't get hurt, y'understand?!"

As he said this, just about everyone in the room except me suddenly started running out the front door, not screaming but whimpering, and still clutching their heads in fear. They all ran right past the gang of criminals, and I noticed that the two henchmen and their respective Pokémon looked around them in confusion, but Hugh and his Seismitoad completely ignored them, focusing ahead the whole time. Why didn't I run as well? Because I already knew why they were there. Running would be absolutely futile in this situation.

"Hugh, shouldn't we stop them?" said one of the henchmen in concern.

"No poyint, the frernt door's bin locked taht. They ain't goin' anywhere. Besahds, the basterd wasn't 'ere when they all ran out, so it'll be easier to fahnd 'im. We 'av a gawd-dayurm job to do, let's git to it!"

Anderson began walking forward at a relaxed pace, his gun now rested on his right shoulder, and he started shouting out to address me, still hidden up at the top arena.

"Parasaht… ah kno' you're in 'ere, you murderous, spore-flingin', scum-suckin' sunuvabitch! Your so-cawlled 'freyend', the crapass Lahmey cat, told us 'bout you! You thought you could hahd from the Sagittarius Mob in the refugee cayurmp?! You thought wrong!"

So… Cee-Wee betrayed me. I should have figured. Not only was he devious, but he often told me how he was the closest thing you could get to an 'honest crook'. In hindsight, I think I should have killed him. Wouldn't have been too difficult.

"Now, you gotta choice. We can do this the easy way… or the 'ard way. The easy way is theyis: you come atta wherever you's hidin', with your clawws hah, an' maybe I'll consider goin' easy on yer. The 'ard way is theyis: I hunt you dow-ern like a dawg, I stick this shotgurn in yer mowth, an' I blow your ferckin' brains out into neyixt Tuesday! You got teyin secinds to decahd, or ah'm decahdin' for yer! One…"

I noticed that, while he was busy giving me demands, his two henchmen and their respective Pokémon began walking up the stairs onto the second layer of the Ice quarry, the humans aiming pistols around. The good news for me was that there was a small ridge of artificial ice on the edge of the top arena so they couldn't see me right away. The one in the knit hat and his Mightyena stopped at the right arena on the second layer to take a look around, and knowing that he would inevitably look in my direction and notice an extremely out-of-place green mushroom at the top of the room, I pulled back.

"…Tew…"

It was then I noticed the other henchman and his Houndoom were fast approaching the stairs to the top level. I could potentially take them both out if they saw me, but it would have been extremely risky. Houndoom was half Fire-Type, and the henchman had a gun; I could not focus on one at a time because the other could deliver a near-lethal attack to me while I was occupied, and even if I somehow did take them both out quickly, the others in the room would certainly be alerted to my presence. The room was a bad place for me to be. It was big, bright, open, with very hiding places. But then I remembered the framework above the 'ceiling'.

"…Three…"

I extended the Wrap vines from my cap and wrapped them around two small fake stalactites, raised myself up to the ceiling and used Brick Break on a subtly cracked, vulnerable spot.

"…Four…"

It created a large, visible dent, and all I needed to do at that point was to steadily lower myself down again before forcing myself up violently, causing me to headbutt the ceiling and crash right through before landing on the framework, just seconds before the Houndoom henchman would have seen me.

"…Fahve…"

Now, for the time being, safely hidden in the gap between the fake ice ceiling and the real steel ceiling, I stopped to think about how I would deal with the gang. Trying to deal with them all simultaneously would be a sure-fire way to commit suicide, since they outnumbered me and had guns. The trick to dealing with armed humans is to hide in an obscure spot and pick them off one by one when they're isolated from their allies.

"…Seeyix…"

I brought up my mental notes on the humans' positioning within the room, and I recalled that the Mightyena henchmen was, before I had gone up there, standing still on the right arena on the second layer. I began to quietly manoeuvre myself over above that area.

"…Sevin…"

The artificial ice was thin here, and to my surprise, he was still standing there, probably taking the 'wait until he comes to me and then shoot him' strategy. A smart move against the uninitiated, but he forgot that I am initiated.

"…Ate…"

I went over to a thick, opaque patch of fake ice directly above him and began to punch away at one side of it to leave a nice, fine crack in the surface, ready to be broken open at will.

"…Nahn…"

The crack was deep. A quick heavy kick to the centre of the patch would send it falling straight onto the henchman's head.

"…Nahn-an'-a-hayerf…"

I could almost smell the smugness coming from Hugh when he said that. Only those who are truly confident in their victory, real or imagined, would delay a countdown in such a manner. Nevertheless, I held on to the steel bar I was standing on and delivered a heavy blow to the fake ceiling with my right foot. Sure enough, the crack quickly spread all around it, the patch gave way and plummeted…

"…Teyin!"

…It promptly hit the Mightyena henchman's head with a hard *smack*. This was duly followed with his body going limp, staggering about and stumbling over the side of the second layer, his unconscious form landing on the perimeter of the central arena.

"…Parasaht, yer dead, you 'ear me?! DEAD!"

With that declaration of lethal intent, he looked over at the newly-formed hole that I had created in the ceiling, and promptly fired off a shotgun round. A vain effort, since the weapon's range was far too short and only barely managed to hit the ceiling at all, let alone pierce it. On the other hand, the Houndoom henchman, who was armed with a clip-loading pistol, also began shooting around the hole. Those bullets did pierce the ceiling. Luckily, though, I had managed to run a short distance away while remaining on the steel framework, causing said bullets to hit the ceiling and ricochet off the beams, causing sparks to fly. He exhausted his eight-bullet clip from doing this and stopped to reload, at which point he proceeded to walk down to the central arena to check on his unconscious comrade, accompanied by his Houndoom. Hugh, however, did the exact opposite, walking upstairs to the top layer before surveying the ceiling closely, joined by the Mightyena. Hugh's Seismitoad stayed in the central arena. Hugh is no idiot, I could tell that he was waiting for me to try breaking open the ceiling again so he could see the dust coming from it and shoot me down, which, at this level, would indeed cause great damage to my insides and outsides. I also noticed that the Mightyena was trying to track me by sniffing the air, detecting any traces of fungi with his advanced sense of smell. The time had come for a little deception.

I laid down some Toxic spores by simply banging my tail down on the fake ceiling, which, while having the desired effect of piquing the Mightyena's curiosity, also attracted the attention of Hugh, who responded with, as I had expected, a quick shotgun blast in my general direction. The blast managed to pierce the ceiling, creating another crack, but once again I was quick to move away, only taking a few bits of fake ice shrapnel to the legs. Hugh grumbled and cursed as he reloaded his Lupara while steadily approaching the area he shot, the Mightyena following close behind. I made my way over to the first hole I made when I was getting into the ceiling to start with, and waited. For you see, while Hugh was cautious in surveying his handiwork, the Mightyena was even more cautious in tracking the spores, and moved as slowly as possible. So slowly that he began to considerably lag behind Hugh. This presented a good opportunity.

I edged over to the hole and waited for the Mightyena to get close. When his head came into view, I Wrapped my cap-vines around the steel bars and jumped down, landing smack-bang on top of his head. At which point, I quickly grabbed hold of his neck, silenced any screams or barks with my tail, and proceeded to release a non-lethal dose of Toxic spores into his respiration system that caused him to pass out quickly. Whether or not he would die from this eventually, I did not know, nor did I care. Once he was dealt with, I speedily let go of his body and raised myself back up above the ceiling before Hugh, who was still too preoccupied with surveying his shotgun handiwork, could notice what had happened.

Meanwhile, back down below, the Houndoom henchman had realized the futility of his efforts to awaken his comrade, who had most likely received a serious concussion from that chunk of fake ice, so he and his companion made their way back upstairs to the second layer, investigating the right arena, the same place where the aforementioned comrade had fallen. He looked up, probably hoping I'd rear my face in that area again so he could show off his extreme ceiling-shooting abilities some more. Going back there would be walking into an obvious trap, but I went back there anyway so I could respond with a counter-trap. Why? Well, by this point, Hugh had finished his ceiling inspection, concluded that he hadn't killed anyone, and looked back, witnessing the sedate body of the Mightyena. With this sight, he exclaimed:

"What in the heyerll!?"

That exclamation managed to attract the attention of the Houndoom henchman, who turned around, an expression of dumbfounded shock forming on his face, while his Houndoom, who was some distance away, did the same thing. I seized this opportunity by once again tying myself to the framework with my vines, dropping down on top of him and silently knocking him unconscious. Unfortunately, however, these thugs were surprisingly adaptable, and performing the same manoeuvre twice didn't work as planned.

The first part of the manoeuvre worked fine. I was able to land on the henchman's shoulders, but then I realized I was dropping on him from a bigger height, and so, as per Newton's Third Law, I ended up knocking him down the ground, the noise of which attracted the attention of the Houndoom, who turned back and shouted:

"HERE! HE'S HERE!"

With that part blown, I resorted to simply knocking the man out with a swift karate chop before raising myself back up. But, as it turned out, even a swift karate chop wasn't fast enough, and the Houndoom pounced on me before I could lift myself off the ground fully, snapping the vines in the process. I needn't worry about the vines, since they grow back fairly quickly, but even so, I was now stuck in the danger zone, as it were.

The Houndoom had me pinned to the ground and tried biting my head off. However, he wasn't too wise, and he visibly pulled back for a second in preparation for the lunging bite, allowing me to grab hold of his jaws and deliver a swift kick to his chest before throwing him over to my right. He rolled onto his four feet and recovered quickly, while I drew my attention the looming threat of Hugh and his gun, who had approached the edge of the top layer and fired off two quick blasts. I jumped over to the side to take cover underneath the slight overpass that each of the layers have, before shooting a few Bullet Seeds out of my mouth to stun him as he stopped to reload again. I hardly ever use Bullet Seed since the Seeds themselves are incredibly weak and incapable of killing anything, and there's only a limited amount of them inside of me at any one time since they take anything between days and months to grow inside of me, depending on how good my diet is, so when I need to knock something out, traditional hand-to-hand combat is much more efficient, I find. It does have its uses, though, mostly temporarily blinding people to get them off your back if spotted, as I was doing here.

The Bullet Seed hit him dead in the eye, and his jerk response was to stagger back, fall over and cover up the damaged area with his free hand while shouting "AWWW SHEEYIT!" Meanwhile, the Houndoom, who had previously taken cover under the overpass like I did, tried to pounce me again, but this time I anticipated and jumped back. Then he opened his mouth and pulled back, the inside of it glowing orange. I could tell that he was going to Ember me. A smart move, if a 'cheap' one.

Just as he was about to lunge forward to release the flames, I rolled over to the side, dodging the searing Embers when they finally did come out. At this point, the Houndoom stopped for a moment and panted like the dog he is, trying to cool his mouth down. While he was busy with that, I rolled back over to my previous location and slammed some stun spores onto his horns. Houndoom horns are made of a very conductive, metallic bone, so this had the effect of, while not paralysing him as the rest of his body was firmly insulated, giving him a strong shock that put him out of action for a few seconds, allowing me to punch him in the face thrice before doing a flip-kick to the jaw, knocking him right back and rendering him unconscious. Then I looked back up to where Hugh was and noticed he was beginning to recover from my Bullet Seed, so I quickly took my vines back out, having now regenerated, shot them up at the hole I dropped in from, and raised myself back to the safe zone, ready for another silent takedown.

Hugh took this juncture to finish his interrupted reloading process before surveying the two newly-sedate bodies of the Houndoom and his owner. Meanwhile, I proceeded to edge along the steelwork again, this time to the cracked area where Hugh had previously shot the ceiling. Since, as you may have guessed, he lacks an indoor voice, he started yelling in complaint at this sudden turn of events.

"Gaw, you gawd-dayurm AMATEURS! Can't you dew ANYTHIN' raht?!"

While he was preoccupied with ranting at people who couldn't even hear him, I had already made my way over to the crack. As it happened, Hugh began to walk under that very same area. I knew that I could take him out fairly easily now since all his comrades bar his Seismitoad were down and out, and the aforementioned Seismitoad would need to be fought on the ground anyway, so I didn't bother with attaching myself to the steelwork and just jumped down, smashing through the weakened ceiling again and right on top of Hugh. He reacted much faster than I anticipated, however, as, rather than waste time trying to shake me off, he just cut out the middle man and pointed his shotgun at my face. I quickly swerved over to his left shoulder as he fired it off (no doubt deafening himself in the process), barely missing the blast, but unfortunately, doing this made me vulnerable as most of my weight was concentrated on a smaller area. My suspicions were proved true as Hugh promptly whipped me in the face with the small butt of his Lupara, disorienting my senses just long enough for him to grab my head with both hands and toss me over his head, onto the floor. Presumably to stop me from fidgeting and messing up his aim, he kicked me on the jaw while I was still down… or at least, he meant to, but he instead ended up kicking me on the underside of my cap, which absorbed most of the damage and didn't disorient me as much as it would have done. As a direct result of this, when he aimed the gun at me again to deliver what he thought would be the coup de grace, I rolled out of the way as he pulled the trigger, the floor taking most of the shot before it could spread far enough to hit me, although I still received some fake ice shrapnel to complement the fake ice shrapnel from earlier.

Now safe from his weapon as it was now empty again, I brought out the vines and Wrapped them around his head, raised both my feet and forcibly pulled him towards me, delivering a hard strike to the groin which made him visibly wince in pain, aside from making his hat fall off. I followed this up by throwing him over me, sending him into a forward roll where he landed on his back, before I jumped back to my feet and performed a spin kick to the head and a backhanded neck chop in quick succession that ultimately knocked him out cold.

Of course, it wasn't over just yet, as the giant, hulking Seismitoad was still on the loose. In fact, dealing with Hugh took far longer than the ideal, drawing my attention away from a constant shaking of the ground as the Seismitoad rushed upstairs to defend his master. By the time I had finished dealing with said master, the Seismitoad had gone "RuaaaAARRRRGGHHH!" before delivering an eleven-tonne backhanded punch to my chest which sent me flying across the room, where I felt something falling out of my head before landing on the central arena. It took me about ten seconds to regain my senses, during which time the great bulky amphibian jumped down from the top floor to the bottom, creating a floor-shattering shockwave. Literally, the fake ice floor broke apart when he landed on it. Makes me wonder how the hell they can maintain these Gyms what with all the damage that must get delivered upon them on a daily basis.

As it happened, this Seismitoad was considerably stronger than most, because once I tried Wrapping his left arm so I could propel myself at him, he simply pulled _me_ over and held out his right arm, causing me to hit it at full force and flip over. With that, he grabbed me by the tail and flung me over to the other side of the arena by the unconscious Mightyena henchman. Clearly, my usual tactics wouldn't work here. I'd need to get creative. Then I remembered. The giant poisonous sacs all over the body of a Seismitoad were a lot like blisters. Applying pressure to them is extremely painful, on account of all the poison inside being pushed towards a place it shouldn't be, not to mention that said poison is extremely pressurised within the sacs. Then I looked over and saw the Mightyena henchman's pistol. The time for pragmatism had come.

I quickly Wrapped up the pistol grip and pulled it over to me, arming me with enough time to get a single shot off, so it had to count. The fat frog wasn't too bright, and so he begun charging at me, inadvertently making the target bigger in the process. When he was less than a second away from me, I pulled the trigger, firing off a round right into the poison sac on his right hand. The sac burst violently, spilling purple liquid all over the floor, and my adversary screamed in an abnormally high-pitched tone, squeezing his affected hand in an attempt to relieve the pain. Then I proceeded to run up towards him and, like the Houndoom, did a high flip-kick to his jaw, and as I plummeted back to the ground, I held my hands out, delivering a double chop to the two poison sacs on his head, no doubt causing some serious brain damage as the sheer pain stacked on top of more pain rendered him just as sedate as all of his comrades.

So, that was that, I thought. Another day, another life-threatening situation averted. Of course, in the short term, that was correct. But in the long term, I knew I was in for some serious suspicion and paranoia as I looked over to the room's entrance and saw Sara there, looking like she had been watching for some time.

* * *

The police officer, in his standard beige uniform with a navy blue jacket marked 'SPPD' in bold white lettering on the back as an adaptation to the cold, walked away to his blue-and-white patrol car, also marked with 'SPPD', one of several that was parked outside the Gym at the time, their lights still flashing red and blue. He had just finished his round of standard witness questions concerning my apparently very vigilante-ish tendencies to hospitalize wanted criminals. Of course, being human and all, he directed all of his questions towards Sara, who answered them on my behalf, despite obviously possessing insufficient knowledge of what had happened since she and everyone else in the Gym were trapped in the entry annex for most of the fight, unable get out the locked-and-barred front doors and too afraid to return to the main room. We all witnessed the aforementioned wanted criminals getting wheeled out of the building, strapped to stretchers with locks on them, over to a pair of green ambulances parked next to the police cars.

All of us were completely silent, even Chunk, much to my surprise. From what one has seen of the movies, one might assume that, after having gotten several very dangerous men grievously injured and locked up, they would be cheering for me, but I, for one, was glad that wasn't happening. Why? Two reasons: one, that'd be both extremely irritating, especially with Chunk's voice involved, and wholly pointless as it'd be a waste of valuable time that could be spent getting to The Botanist which, as I've mentioned, was of utmost urgency at this point, and two, because it was an indicator of the strength of my cover, or lack thereof. The fact that they were all silent and watching me with looks of extreme caution and inquisition implied that they were catching on to my inclinations towards killing, if nothing else. Even Sara, who, if she was as experienced as the others said, could 'read' her Pokémon quite well, seemed to be figuring out my lethal nature, as it were.

To make matters worse, what followed may as well have been a giant signpost that said 'THIS BRELOOM IS DANGEROUS!' at this point.

What exactly happened? Well, as we began to silently walk away from the 'crime scene' that was the Gym, a sleek, black SUV with tinted windows rounded the corner into the circle and parked near the steps to the memorial. It certainly looked shady enough to prompt Sara and the rest of us to walk at a faster pace, but it ultimately proved to be a futile effort. The driver's door on the big shadowy vehicle swung open, and a man who looked to be in his late thirties stepped out. He had blonde hair that was cut into a fine 'buzz' on his head, with the entirety of his forehead visible, and his face was rather gaunt. He was wearing dark sunglasses, which only served to increase his shadiness levels, coupled with black formal shoes and grey suit, with a large brown greatcoat over the top and a grey scarf atop that. Clearly, being a shady government-type figure doesn't make you immune to the cold.

As it turned out, he wasn't a G-man at all. He was something much, much worse. As me and the group, by this point power-walking, tried to speedily get away from the man, he responded by walking over to Sara in an equally speedy manner, getting some kind of black wallet out of his coat pocket in the process. He cut forward and did a sharp 'L'-turn to intercept us while simultaneously making it nigh on impossible for Sara to move away from him without looking like she was about to move away from him. Eventually, the man was walking straight at Sara, and when he got close enough, he held out his wallet and allowed it to 'drop' open, revealing a polished circular black-and-silver badge, displaying a stylized Zoroark head and the words 'Central Office of Domestic Intelligence' written on the circle in a… well, a circular format.

We all stopped dead in our tracks since ignoring a badge-signal by a police officer, or in this case, a CODI agent, is a criminal offence, punishable by fine. And nobody wants to pay a fine, not even to get to work faster or whatever it is they're doing. Sara sighed, knowing she was obviously into something bigger than she thought, and addressed the man directly.

"What do you want?"

"Don't be alarmed, Miss Al-Dubaj, you're not in any trouble with us."

"Al-Dubaj? How did you know my real family name?"

"It's the job. We know a lot of things. I'm Agent Walker, and I'd like to ask a few questions concerning the incident inside the Gym."

"Why, what's the point?! I've already told the police everything I know! Why would CODI be interested in some half-note brawl inside a Gym?!"

"Well, the bottom line is, for some time now, the Office has been running an investigation on a criminal organization called PEA: the Problem Elimination Agency. Have you heard of it?"

"…Uh… n-n-no, never heard of it. Sounds dangerous."

That was the tone of a liar, no doubt about it. Well, that was one fear of mine confirmed. The Botanist had definitely told his daughter about PEA, and with that in mind, unmasking my true intentions would probably be a lot less of a task than I or she could have imagined. Walker shared my suspicions and indicated so with a sceptical…

"…Uh-huh. Well, that's because it is dangerous. It's essentially a group of highly-experienced Pokémon trainers who are paid to kill people with their teams, known as 'Pokémon Killers'."

"So… basically a bunch of mercs? Okay, so what has this got to do with me?"

"I happened to be investigating a drug shipment in the area when I heard about this brawl in the Gym. From what the local police have told me, the fighting techniques of this… Breloom, this… Mr. Stool… seem remarkably similar to the techniques popular amongst Pokémon Killers. We believe that, if we could somehow get our hands on a Pokémon Killer, or former Pokémon Killer, they could somehow lead us to their Handlers and expose PEA in full form."

He soon noticed me standing directly behind Sara, and he kneeled down to look me straight in the eyes, and I returned the sentiment to him. Well, we both did as best we could, since he was wearing dark glasses and my cap was abnormally close to my eyes, obscuring them a lot of the time.

"Hmm… so you're Mr. Stool, eh? Certainly looks quite sturdy. Tough. Many battle scars… some of them older than others. What did Hugh Anderson want with you… what did he…?"

"What the hell are you doing?" Sara said, her hatred of mistreating Pokémon flaring up in the face of what she saw as an intrusive 'inspection'. "D'you wanna buy him or something, 'cause he's not for sale! No Pokémon are! They have privacy too, y'know!"

"I am aware of that. I just find it interesting to look upon him and see all these scars of his. The ones that are dark red are recent, so we can ignore those, but look here, on his mouth… it's chipped. Deeply, too. No legal Pokémon battle from before the relaxation of the rules could result in such damage, and these look old enough to date from before then."

"How would you know? You're not a scientist."

"I suppose you're right…" He said in seeming resignation, getting back up onto his feet. "Listen. The point I'm trying to make is that we believe this Breloom might be a former Pokémon Killer or, at the very least, has something of a dark past."

"So?! Even if he is, which he's not, what difference would it make?! He's still my Pokémon!"

"Please, calm down. You must understand that I and the rest of the Office may have been a bit too hasty here. The Office has been chasing ghosts, jumping through hoops and following complex leads to dead-ends for years in this investigation. We're literally taking anything we can get at this point. At the moment, we don't have any material evidence to suggest our suspicions about 'Mr. Stool' are correct, we can only speculate. The police have yet to show me everything, though, which is why I came to look at the crime scene personally."

"Then go look at it instead of bothering us! Stool was just defending himself against a bunch of thuggish shitheads!"

"I'm sure he was. There is one other thing I'd like to ask, though."

"What's that?"

"I assume you've had him on your team for a while now…"

"Well, actually, I only caught him a few days ago."

"Interesting. Tell me, from what you've seen of him, does he seem particularly… ferocious? Bloodthirsty? Lethal, perhaps?"

"Okay, this is getting ridiculous. I'm not answering any more of your stupid questions, you spook."

"Suit yourself. But just so you know, if we find anything that links Stool to the one we're looking for, you'll be seeing us again. And we'll have a warrant."

"Pfffft. Whatever."

With that, Walker… walked past us and towards the Gym to address the cops there. I suppose I should be thankful that Sara had put her and our privacy over her respect for authority. Not that she really has any, from what Maggie told me the day before, since the government still haven't completely eradicated Pokémon dependency on humans, and the Pokérus-B virus.

With that sudden bombshell out of the way, Sara, instead of continuing her walk back out of the city, sat down on a nearby bench and rested her face on her elbow, appearing to be in deep thought about something. While I was also in deep thought about how I could keep my cover going after this mess, Rings suddenly stepped up and tapped me on the shoulder before whispering into my ear.

"In that alley. Now. We need to talk."

Things couldn't really decline any further than they had now, so at this point I simply expected to learn that my cover was, for all intents and purposes, blown, and followed his instructions to meet him in the extremely narrow 'alley' near the bench, filled with incredibly deep snow. We walked quite a fair distance away from Sara, almost to the point where the place we entered became a bright slit on the horizon, and then, without warning he turned around with surprising speed and punched me in the face.

I could tell from the exasperated look on his face that he had hurled that punch with as much force as he could muster, but in spite of this, his decrepit old fist only succeeded in knocking my head to the side and spraying a few tiny droplets of blood onto the wall next to me. I looked back at him and waited for him to throw another move. Like The Dust, I could see 'the fire' in his eyes. He had become ferocious and lethal, just like me, but without the tactical refinement to back it up effectively.

Sure enough, he threw another punch, but this time I grabbed the fist, spun it around so this back was facing me and kicked him hard in the back, knocking him down. Then I jumped on top of him, Wrapped both his hands behind his back and tied his neck with my tail. Of course, being in that mythical state of ferocity, he wasn't accepting his swift defeat and instead struggled incessantly.

"Grr… get off of me, you fucking psycho!"

"Psycho? I'll have you know _you_ were the one who punched _me._"

"It's true, isn't it?! You're a Pokémon Killer, aren't you, 'Parasite'?! How the hell did I not see it before?! You suddenly turn up in the middle of a field and you conveniently faint in front of her, you speak too damn well for a simple wild Pokémon, you get bored easily when battling because you can't kill your opponents, and you asked way too many questions during your first day with the team! Then you go and have a conversation with a Weavile behind the Mess Hall and discuss your previous murders, and now this goddamn Gym brawl!"

"Congratulations, detective. But here's the thing: now you're going to stay out of my way and let me do my job, because if you do, then nobody gets hurt."

"Stay out of your way?! Why, why would I do that?! You're a Killer! You've probably slaughtered dozens of people and Pokémon, if not hundreds! You really think I'm just gonna sit idly by and let you murder someone else?!"

"Yes."

"What the hell do you even want from us, anyway?! What did Sara do?!"

This was certainly a tight spot. It looked like a good time to take an exam on 'how to use strange emotional concepts to get yourself out of a tight spot'. In other words, some tactical manipulation. I could already tell that Rings was too trusting since he had given in to my demands to tell him about Sara just a day after I had met him when most would have told me to wait for a month or two. I could bail myself out after all.

"I'm not here to kill Sara, or any of you. If you must know, I'm here to kill her father."

"Hah, I knew it! No wonder you conveniently showed up days before she was supposed to visit!"

"Her father is an evil man. He was one of the Pokémon trainers that worked for PEA. He directed us to kill, in the same way that Sara dictated how you lived your lives before she was changed, and how many other trainers do. We just followed orders. PEA doesn't exist anymore. It was compromised over a year ago. But the police don't know that, the government doesn't, and those thugs didn't. I just want to clear my conscience and put this needless killing behind me, while her father sits in that mansion and hides like a coward rather than confront his past. He deserves to die. Who would you rather have condemned to death? Me, or him?"

"…Ugh… well… when you put it like that… but how do I know you're not lying?"

"You'll just have to trust me. I've done quite well for her team so far, and from what I can gather, she appreciates my presence. I deserve a bit of rehabilitation. I shouldn't be condemned forever for being forced to kill by the evil, conniving man that is Sara's father."

"Gah… you're… you're right… that's some shitty luck… but what am I gonna tell the others? How would Maggie react if I told her you're a former assassin?"

"You won't tell them. And you won't 'help' me, either. You'll just stay out of my way until he's dead."

"Do you really have to kill him, though? Can't you just get him arrested or something?"

"He has a good cover. Nobody knows about his old life. Plus, he's rich. If he was arrested, he could wheel in a million-dollar lawyer and he'd be free in no time at all. No. That cannot happen."

"I see your point… alright fine, I'll let you do your job… but I swear, if you so much as touch Sara, or any of the others…"

"You don't need to say it."

I released my hold on him and got back up onto my feet, helping him back up onto his feet as a display of trust. Ideally, if all had gone to plan, I wouldn't have had to lie back there. Granted, in practice, it would have occurred in exactly the same manner, with the crucial difference that I would be saying those words honestly. But then I remember Scav. One death always leads to another. And the memorial. When you're standing on the death of many, you're very likely to be stuck there.

Forever.


End file.
